Terms of Service

1. Terms of Service Effective date: [26/04/2026] These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of Grounded Study, operated at sulcai.com (the “Service”, “Site”, “we”, “us”, or “our”). By creating an account, signing in, uploading material, generating questions, using practice or exam features, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
2. Beta status The Service is currently provided as a private beta. You acknowledge that the Service may contain bugs, errors, incomplete features, unavailable features, inaccurate outputs, or interruptions. The Service may change, be suspended, or be discontinued at any time. We may revoke beta access at our discretion. The Service is not currently intended for public launch, institutional deployment, clinical use, legal use, financial use, or other high-stakes reliance.
3. Eligibility You must be at least 16 years old, or the minimum age required to consent to digital services in your jurisdiction, whichever is higher. If you use the Service on behalf of an organisation, school, university, business, or institution, you represent that you have authority to bind that organisation to these Terms.
4. Accounts and authentication You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of your account and login method. You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account. You must notify us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without authorisation. We may use third-party identity providers, such as Google, and email-based authentication systems. You are responsible for keeping your email account secure.
5. What the Service does Grounded Study allows users to upload study materials and generate practice questions, explanations, feedback, mock exams, and related learning outputs based on those materials. The Service may process uploaded materials by extracting text, chunking documents, creating embeddings, retrieving relevant passages, sending content to AI providers, generating questions, verifying outputs, grading responses, and storing generated questions and user progress.
6. Your responsibility for uploaded material You are solely responsible for all material you upload, submit, paste, or otherwise provide to the Service. By uploading or submitting material, you represent and warrant that: • you own the material, or have all rights, licences, permissions, and consents necessary to upload it and use it with the Service; • your upload and our processing of the material under these Terms will not infringe copyright, trade mark, trade secret, privacy, confidentiality, publicity, contractual, academic, institutional, or other rights; • the material was not obtained from a pirated, leaked, cracked, unlawfully distributed, or otherwise unauthorised source; • uploading the material does not breach any licence, terms of sale, subscription agreement, publisher terms, platform terms, university policy, school policy, employment obligation, confidentiality obligation, or law; • the material does not contain personal information, health information, patient information, student information, confidential information, or third-party data unless you have a lawful basis and permission to upload and process it through the Service; • the material does not contain malware, viruses, harmful code, or security threats; • the material is not unlawful, defamatory, harassing, hateful, abusive, sexually exploitative, or otherwise prohibited. You must not upload textbooks, journal articles, course packs, paid educational resources, publisher materials, examination materials, or other copyrighted works unless you have the legal right, licence, permission, or applicable exception allowing you to use that material with the Service. We do not pre-screen all uploads and we do not verify that you have rights to upload material. If we receive a credible complaint, takedown request, legal notice, or other evidence that material may be infringing, unlawful, confidential, or unauthorised, we may remove or disable access to that material, suspend your account, terminate your access, preserve relevant records, or take other appropriate action.
7. Licence you grant us You retain ownership of the original material you upload. To operate the Service, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transmit, process, analyse, extract text from, chunk, index, embed, retrieve, generate outputs from, display to you, and otherwise use your uploaded material and submitted content solely for the purposes of: • providing the Service to you; • generating questions, explanations, practice sessions, mock exams, feedback, citations, and related outputs for your account; • storing your materials and generated outputs in your account; • maintaining, securing, debugging, monitoring, and improving the reliability of the Service; • detecting abuse, enforcing these Terms, and complying with law; • creating aggregated or de-identified operational statistics that do not identify you or reveal the content of your private uploads. This licence lasts for as long as necessary to provide the Service, maintain backups, comply with law, resolve disputes, prevent abuse, and enforce these Terms. This licence does not give us the right to publicly publish your private uploads in their original form.
8. No cross-user sharing of private uploads or generated questions during private beta During the private beta, we do not intentionally share your private uploaded materials with other users. During the private beta, we do not intentionally serve questions generated from your private uploads to other users. We may use aggregated or de-identified operational metrics, such as usage counts, error rates, generation success rates, and performance statistics, to improve the Service, provided those metrics do not reveal your private uploaded content. We may later introduce shared libraries, licensed content, institutional content, publisher partnerships, or cross-user deduplication features, but we will update the Terms and provide appropriate notice before doing so.
9. AI providers and model training The Service may use third-party AI providers, including OpenAI, to process uploaded materials and generate outputs. Where we use the OpenAI API, OpenAI’s platform documentation states that API data is not used to train or improve OpenAI models by default unless the customer explicitly opts in. We do not use your uploaded materials to train or fine-tune AI models unless we obtain separate express consent from you or have another lawful basis and provide appropriate notice. We may use logs, error reports, quality evaluations, de-identified statistics, and operational metrics to improve the reliability, safety, performance, and usability of the Service.
10. AI-generated content disclaimer The Service uses automated systems and large language models. Generated outputs may contain errors. Questions, answers, explanations, citations, rationales, grading, feedback, summaries, and other outputs: • may be inaccurate, incomplete, ambiguous, outdated, unsupported, or misleading; • may not match your syllabus, curriculum, examination style, university requirements, marking scheme, or professional standards; • may not identify all relevant parts of uploaded material; • may misinterpret uploaded material; • may generate plausible but incorrect explanations; • may fail to detect errors in your answers. The Service is a study aid only. It is not a substitute for textbooks, lectures, teachers, tutors, official course materials, professional advice, or independent verification. You must not rely on the Service as your sole study tool for any high-stakes exam, licensing exam, professional assessment, clinical decision, legal decision, financial decision, engineering decision, or safety-critical task. We are not responsible for grades, examination results, professional outcomes, academic outcomes, clinical outcomes, financial outcomes, employment outcomes, or other consequences arising from reliance on AI-generated outputs.
11. Professional and medical disclaimer The Service may be used with educational materials from many fields, including medicine, health, law, engineering, finance, science, and other professional domains. enerated outputs are for general study and educational support only. They are not professional advice. In particular, the Service does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment recommendations, legal advice, financial advice, engineering advice, or other professional advice. You are responsible for independently verifying any output before relying on it.
12. Intellectual property in the Service The Service, Site, software, interface, design, systems, branding, trademarks, prompts, workflows, and other materials we provide are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Service for its intended purpose. You must not: • copy, modify, reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code from the Service except as permitted by law; • scrape, harvest, or bulk-download the Service or its outputs; • use the Service to build a competing service; • bypass rate limits, security controls, access controls, or usage restrictions; • resell, sublicense, commercially redistribute, or provide access to the Service or generated outputs except as expressly permitted by us in writing.
13. Prohibited conduct You must not: • use the Service for unlawful purposes; • upload pirated, leaked, cracked, or unlawfully obtained material; • upload material that infringes copyright, trade mark, privacy, confidentiality, publicity, contractual, academic, institutional, or other rights; • upload patient records, student records, confidential records, or personal information of others without a lawful basis and appropriate permission; • upload malware, harmful code, or security threats; • attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service, other accounts, data, systems, or infrastructure; • probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service except under a written security research agreement; • interfere with the operation, security, or availability of the Service; • use bots, scrapers, automated tools, or bulk access methods except as expressly permitted by us; • attempt to bypass safety, copyright, usage, billing, or access controls; • use the Service to create unlawful, defamatory, harassing, hateful, exploitative, sexually abusive, or otherwise harmful content; • use the Service in a way that could harm minors; • misrepresent your identity, affiliation, rights, permissions, or authority.
14. Payment and pricing During private beta, the Service may be free, invitation-only, limited, or offered at promotional pricing. We may introduce, change, suspend, or remove pricing, quotas, usage limits, plans, or features. Paid services, if offered, may be processed by a third-party payment provider. We do not store full payment card details. Fees are non-refundable except where required by law or expressly stated otherwise.
15. Usage limits We may impose limits on uploads, file size, storage, generation count, question count, AI usage, rate limits, or other usage. We may change these limits at any time, including during the beta period. We may suspend or restrict accounts that exceed limits, abuse the Service, create disproportionate load, or present security, legal, or operational risk.
16. Suspension and termination We may suspend or terminate your access at any time, with or without notice, including where: • you breach these Terms; • we believe your uploads may be infringing, unlawful, confidential, unsafe, or unauthorised; • we receive a credible complaint, takedown notice, legal request, or rights-holder complaint; • your use creates security, legal, privacy, operational, reputational, or financial risk; • we discontinue the Service or private beta; • we are required or permitted to do so by law. On termination, your right to use the Service ends immediately. Sections that by their nature should survive termination will survive, including sections on uploaded material, licences, AI disclaimers, intellectual property, prohibited conduct, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, governing law, and disputes.
17. Deletion of uploads and account data You may request deletion of your uploaded materials or account by contacting us at privacy@sulcai.com. We will take reasonable steps to delete or de-identify your personal information and uploaded materials, subject to legal, security, backup, audit, fraud-prevention, dispute-resolution, and operational retention requirements. Backups may persist for a limited period after deletion. Aggregated or de-identified records may be retained.
18. Disclaimers To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. We do not warrant that: • the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or available at all times; • uploads will always process successfully; • generated questions, answers, citations, explanations, feedback, or scores will be accurate, complete, reliable, or suitable for your purpose; • the Service will meet your educational, professional, academic, institutional, or commercial requirements; • the Service will be free from data loss, security incidents, or defects. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, representations, and guarantees, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, non-infringement, and availability. Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any consumer guarantee, right, remedy, or liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, restricted, or modified, including under the Australian Consumer Law. Where permitted by law, our liability for breach of a non-excludable guarantee is limited, at our option, to re-supplying the Service or paying the cost of having the Service re-supplied.
19. Limitation of liability To the maximum extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, opportunity, grades, exam results, professional outcomes, academic outcomes, business interruption, or reputational harm, arising out of or related to your use of, or inability to use, the Service. To the maximum extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service will not exceed the greater of: • the amount you paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the claim; or • AUD 100. This limitation applies regardless of the legal theory of liability, whether contract, tort, negligence, statute, equity, or otherwise, and even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.
20. Indemnity You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless us, our founders, directors, officers, employees, contractors, agents, service providers, and affiliates from and against any claim, demand, proceeding, loss, liability, damage, cost, or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of or related to: • material you upload, submit, paste, or provide; • your use of the Service; • your breach of these Terms; • your breach of any law; • your infringement or alleged infringement of any third-party right, including copyright, trade mark, privacy, confidentiality, publicity, contractual, academic, institutional, or other rights; • your misuse of AI-generated outputs; • your unauthorised upload of personal information, confidential information, copyrighted material, or third-party material. We reserve the right to control the defence and settlement of any matter subject to indemnification, and you agree to cooperate with us. This clause is intended to operate only to the extent permitted by applicable law.
21. Copyright complaints We respect intellectual property rights. If we receive a credible copyright complaint or takedown request about material uploaded to the Service, we may remove or disable access to the material, notify the user, suspend or terminate the account, preserve relevant records, and take other appropriate action. Repeated credible copyright complaints may result in account termination. Our Copyright Takedown Policy forms part of these Terms.
22. Third-party services The Service may rely on third-party providers, including hosting providers, database providers, storage providers, authentication providers, AI providers, analytics providers, payment processors, and email providers. We are not responsible for third-party services, outages, errors, security incidents, policies, or terms, except to the extent required by law. Your use of third-party services may be subject to their own terms and privacy policies.
23. Changes to the Service We may add, remove, modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time. We are not liable for any modification, suspension, or discontinuation of the Service, except to the extent required by law.
24. Changes to these Terms We may update these Terms from time to time. If changes are material, we will take reasonable steps to notify you, such as by email, in-product notice, or updating the effective date on the Site. Your continued use of the Service after the updated Terms take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.
25. Governing law and jurisdiction These Terms are governed by the laws of Western Australia and the Commonwealth of Australia, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Subject to any non-excludable rights you may have, the courts located in Perth, Western Australia have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service, and you submit to that jurisdiction. Nothing in this section limits any non-excludable rights you may have under the laws of your country, state, or territory of residence.
26. Miscellaneous These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, Cookie Notice, Copyright Takedown Policy, and any other policies referenced, form the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, restructure, financing, sale of assets, or transfer of the Service.
27. Contact Questions about these Terms can be sent to: sulcaisupport@gmail.com