Acceptable Use Policy

Introduction

This Acceptable Use Policy (“Use Policy”) governs the use of the Services. This Use Policy is incorporated into and forms part of our Terms and Conditions (the “Terms”). Any capitalized terms not defined in this Use Policy have the meanings set forth in the Terms.

Core Principles

Our Use Policy is built on these foundational principles:

• Research with Integrity: Users must ensure that AI-assisted research outputs are honest, properly attributed, and compliant with applicable academic and institutional standards.
• Respect Rights: Users must honor intellectual property, privacy rights, and the rights of research subjects in all work produced with the Services.
• Use AI Transparently: Users must be forthcoming about the role of AI assistance in their research and comply with disclosure requirements of their institutions, publishers, and funding bodies.
• Protect Communities: The Services must not be used in ways that endanger individuals, compromise research subjects, or undermine public trust in scholarship.

Prohibited Uses

The Services must not be used for any of the following purposes:

• Illegal Activity: Any activity that violates applicable law, including unauthorized access to computer systems, development of malware or hacking tools, intellectual property infringement, or facilitation of fraud, trafficking, or other criminal conduct.
• Harmful Content: Generating content that promotes violence, self-harm, exploitation of minors, hate speech, or harassment. Creating deepfakes or synthetic media for deceptive purposes is also prohibited.
• Weapons and Critical Infrastructure: Developing or refining weapons, explosive devices, or tools designed to disrupt critical infrastructure including power grids, healthcare systems, telecommunications, transportation, or financial markets.
• Deception and Manipulation: Generating fake research findings, fabricated data, misleading citations, fraudulent reviews, or disinformation. Users must not use the Services to impersonate individuals or institutions.
• Surveillance and Discrimination: Unauthorized monitoring of individuals, building discriminatory profiling systems, or processing biometric data without proper consent.

Academic and Research Integrity

Users must not represent AI-generated or AI-assisted outputs as entirely their own original work. When using the Services to draft, summarize, analyze, or review research materials, users must comply with the attribution and disclosure requirements of their institutions, publishers, funding bodies, and applicable professional standards.

The Services must not be used to fabricate or falsify research data, generate fraudulent citations or references, produce misleading literature reviews, or otherwise undermine the integrity of the scholarly record. Users are responsible for independently verifying AI-assisted outputs for accuracy before incorporating them into published work or submissions.

For research involving human subjects, protected health information, or other sensitive data, users must ensure that their use of the Services complies with all applicable institutional review board (IRB) requirements, data use agreements, and ethical research standards.

Data and Privacy Protection

Users must only process data for which they have the legal right to use. While the Services are designed with a local-first architecture and research data remains on the user’s device, queries and prompts derived from that data may be transmitted to third-party AI service providers in order to generate responses. Users are responsible for ensuring that any data they index or submit through the Services does not violate applicable data protection laws, confidentiality obligations, or data use agreements.

Users must not index or process repositories containing classified information, protected health information, personally identifiable information of research subjects, or other sensitive data unless they have obtained all required authorizations and the applicable third-party AI provider’s terms permit such processing. Personal data should be anonymized or pseudonymized before processing whenever feasible.

The Services must not be used to harvest personal information without proper consent, generate synthetic personal data for identity theft, or attempt to bypass privacy controls or data access restrictions.

Content and Output Guidelines

Users are responsible for reviewing and verifying all outputs generated with the assistance of the Services before relying on them in published research, submissions, or decision-making. AI-generated summaries, analyses, and literature reviews may contain inaccuracies, and users must exercise independent professional judgment.

Content generated through the Services that promotes self-harm, provides instructions for dangerous activities, exploits minors, produces graphic violence, or constitutes hate speech is strictly prohibited.

Users must properly attribute AI-assisted outputs when required by applicable institutional policies, publisher guidelines, or regulations. When incorporating AI-generated content into research products, users should maintain records of how the Services were used sufficient to satisfy applicable disclosure requirements.

Third-Party AI Services

The Services connect to third-party large language model providers (such as Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI) to process queries and generate responses. Queries may be routed through a third-party routing service (such as OpenRouter) that selects among supported providers. Users’ use of the Services must also comply with the applicable usage policies and terms of service of these third-party providers. We may update the list of supported providers from time to time.

Users acknowledge that queries submitted through the Services are transmitted to these third-party providers and are subject to their respective data handling practices. We encourage users to review the privacy policies and terms of the underlying AI providers. Tuva AI is not responsible for the content of responses generated by third-party models or for changes to third-party providers’ terms or policies.

High-Risk Domains and Commercial Use

For research or applications in regulated or high-risk domains (including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, legal, finance, national security, and human subjects research), users must implement appropriate safeguards such as qualified human review of AI-assisted outputs, compliance with domain-specific regulations, and adherence to applicable professional standards. AI-generated outputs in these domains must not be treated as a substitute for professional judgment.

The Services must not be used to facilitate fraudulent schemes, scams, or market manipulation. Users must not reverse engineer the Services’ functionality or use outputs to train competing AI systems without explicit permission. Systematic extraction of the Services’ capabilities, unauthorized resale of access, or violation of any terms of service is prohibited.

Services Integrity

Users must not create multiple accounts to evade restrictions, share credentials inappropriately, automate account creation for abuse, impersonate others, or circumvent usage limits. Attempts to bypass the Services’ safety features, inject malicious prompts, exploit vulnerabilities in the extension or its integrations, interfere with other users’ operations, or intentionally degrade Services performance are strictly prohibited.

Compliance and Legal Requirements

Users bear full responsibility for ensuring their use complies with all applicable export control regulations, data protection laws including GDPR and CCPA, industry-specific regulations, intellectual property laws, and all relevant local and international legal requirements.

The Services must not be used for any illegal purpose, including copyright infringement, trade secret misappropriation, contract violations, or any criminal activities.

Enforcement and Consequences

We may monitor usage patterns and review session logs to detect violations, to the extent permitted by law and our privacy policy. Monitoring will be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable privacy laws. For material violations, we may provide warnings and an opportunity to remediate; severe or repeated violations may result in suspension, termination, or legal action.

Violations may result in graduated enforcement actions ranging from warnings to reduced access, temporary account suspension, permanent termination for severe violations, and legal action for criminal activities.

User Responsibility

Each user is solely responsible for its compliance with this Use Policy and for any consequences arising from a violation. Tuva AI is not responsible for user conduct or content that violates this Use Policy and reserves all rights and remedies available to it under the Terms with respect to any such violation.

Updates and Modifications

This Use Policy may be updated to address emerging technologies, new threat patterns, regulatory requirements, and community feedback. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to deliver reasonable notice of material changes when feasible.

Contact Us

To report suspected violations or harmful outputs or request clarification or compliance guidance, contact us at support@tuva.ai.