FAQ

The donor-gamete industry includes sperm, egg, and embryo donation; fertility clinics; cryobanks; donor programs; donors; intended parents; recipient families; and donor-conceived people. Aerial uses this term because the product problem is bigger than one family tree: it includes records, screening, donor profiles, identity release, health updates, sibling networks, access rules, and institutional accountability.¹

Commercial DNA testing, social media, public records, and online search have changed the practical reality of donor anonymity and genetic-relative discovery. Ancestry reports more than 25 million people in its DNA network, and 23andMe reports more than 15 million genotyped customers. A 2026 ethics paper describes direct-to-consumer DNA testing as a force that can remove donor anonymity at any stage of a donor-conceived person's life. Clinics, cryobanks, donors, and families need systems that assume identity and relationship information may become discoverable, then handle records, updates, contact boundaries, and review responsibly.²³⁴⁵

It helps, but it is not enough by itself. U.S. sperm-bank research shows open-identity donor availability has become much more common, but identity release still depends on what was collected at donation, whether records are retained, whether donor contact and health information stay current, and whether families, donors, clinics, and cryobanks have a clear process for review, updates, and boundaries before and after release.⁶⁷

The most important records are identity-release terms, donor profile details, medical and family health updates, donor codes or program identifiers, sibling-network context, contact preferences, clinic or cryobank review notes, and the source documents behind important claims. Aerial is designed around durable records rather than one-time forms.¹

Research and community guidance generally support early, intentional disclosure over secrecy or late accidental discovery, while recognizing that each family needs age-appropriate support. A 2025 Human Reproduction survey found early intentional disclosure was associated with more than three times the odds of disclosure satisfaction compared with late unintentional disclosure or inadvertent discovery.⁸⁹¹⁰

Many of the records that matter most start with clinics, cryobanks, or donor programs: screening, donor codes, program type, identity-release terms, reported outcomes, medical-history updates, and review decisions. Families and donors need access and context, but institutions often hold the source records and workflow responsibility.¹

Regulation is beginning to catch up with the donor-gamete industry's lifelong obligations. Colorado's law is an example of the direction of travel: licensing, identity-release requirements, permanent record retention, medical-history update expectations, psychoeducational materials, and offspring-limit policy. Even when laws vary by jurisdiction, the product need is the same: durable records, update workflows, and accountable review.¹¹¹²

Aerial is building privacy-preserving accountability infrastructure for the donor-gamete industry. Families can organize donor-conceived relationships and Personal Network context. Donors can manage profile, health-update, visibility, and response workflows. Clinics and cryobanks can request access to review-oriented donor-record infrastructure.¹

Families can create an account, choose the family access path, and start organizing Personal Network context around donor links, known half-siblings, household relationships, privacy expectations, and the records or identifiers they already have. The family path is built for clarity before broad sharing.¹³⁶

Donors can create an account, choose the donor access path, identify what kind of donor arrangement they are connected to, and start from the goal that fits them: health updates, visibility preferences, responding to a family, or claiming a donor profile. Donor access is designed around control, context, and review rather than public exposure.²

Institutional access can expose sensitive operational workflows, donor records, review queues, and organization-level responsibilities. Aerial routes clinics, cryobanks, donor programs, and professional partners through a request process so the right organization, role, and use case can be reviewed before access is opened.¹

Families should bring any donor code, clinic, cryobank, program, or known donor context they have. Donors should bring any donor code, clinic or program name, donor type, and the first thing they want to do. Clinics and cryobanks should request access with organization name, work email, role or title, organization type, and reason for interest.⁶

AI should assist by organizing evidence, surfacing inconsistencies, identifying missing updates, flagging unusual offspring-count signals, routing review, summarizing record state, and preserving audit trails. It should not be positioned as the final authority on identity, medical claims, donor selection, or safety. The Aerial positioning is AI-assisted and human-accountable.¹

No. Aerial should use AI to prepare, compare, summarize, and route information for review. Decisions about identity release, medical-history interpretation, profile verification, contact expansion, escalation, and institutional policy should stay human-accountable and traceable to source records.¹

Verification means moving important donor details beyond unsupported self-reporting into evidence-backed, reviewable workflows. AI can compare claims against source material, identify missing evidence, flag conflicts, and route review. It does not mean Aerial automatically proves every identity, credential, family-history claim, or medical-history detail without human or institutional accountability.¹

Software can make risky patterns visible earlier by connecting records, offspring-count context, donation outcomes, profile inconsistencies, update failures, and unsafe contact patterns. The right claim is visibility, review, and escalation, not a guarantee that software alone prevents every harmful pattern. Human review, institutional policy, and regulation still matter.¹²¹¹

A simple privacy setting usually answers only yes or no. Aerial's access rules are more specific: what can be shared, with whom, when, for what purpose, from which source record, and under whose review. That matters for identity release, health updates, donor profile sharing, sibling connection interest, and contact boundaries.²⁶