Terms of Use

1. The agreement

These Terms of Use ("Terms") are an agreement between you and [LEGAL ENTITY NAME], trading as cognificance.com ("we", "us", "our"), which operates AI Challenge Portal (the "Service"). Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information and forms part of these Terms.

You accept these Terms by ticking the acceptance boxes when you first sign in, or by using the Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. If you accept on behalf of an organization, you confirm you have authority to bind it. [COUNSEL: confirm acceptance mechanics for minors (contracts are voidable in many jurisdictions) and whether the Privacy Policy should be acknowledged as a notice rather than incorporated as contract terms.]

2. Who may use the Service

• You must be at least 13 years old. The Service is not for children under 13, and accounts with a date of birth under 13 are refused.
• If you are under 18, or under the age of majority where you live, you may use the Service only with the permission of a parent or guardian or through your school or other Institution, and they should review these Terms with you.
• You may not use the Service if we have previously suspended or removed your access, or if the law prohibits you from using it.

3. Institutional use

If a school, district, or other organization ("Institution") gave you access, these Terms apply alongside our separate agreement with the Institution. If they conflict, the Institution agreement controls as between us and the Institution. Your Institution controls your account: it can create, change, deactivate, or remove it, see your work as described in the Privacy Policy, and decide how long it is kept.

Institutions and their staff agree to: obtain any notices, consents, or authorizations needed to let students use the Service, including parental consent where the law requires it; not create accounts for children under 13; use student information only for educational purposes; and follow their own safeguarding duties when they receive a safeguarding notification.

4. Accounts and security

• Accounts are created by an Institution, by us, or by signing up with a class code a teacher shares. Sign-in is handled by Microsoft Entra External ID.
• Give accurate information, including your date of birth, and keep it up to date.
• Keep your sign-in details confidential and do not share your account. You are responsible for activity under your account unless it results from our failure to protect it.
• Teachers must keep class join codes within their class. Anyone with a valid code can join that class until it expires or reaches its use limit.
• Tell us promptly through the contact form if you think your account has been compromised.

5. Acceptable use

Use the Service for its educational purpose: working through challenges, showing your reasoning, designing and assigning challenges, and reviewing progress. Remember that your teachers and Institution can read your conversations. You must not:

• access, or try to access, accounts, records, or functions your role does not allow, or another Institution's data;
• try to extract hidden instructions, grading rules, or system prompts, or manipulate the AI to bypass its rules, safety measures, or evaluation ("prompt injection" or "jailbreaking"); attempts pause the session for review by your teachers or by us;
• probe, scan, overload, or disrupt the Service, bypass rate limits or abuse checks, or use bots, scrapers, or automated scripts without our written permission;
• reverse engineer, copy, or resell the Service, or use it or its output to build a competing product or to train AI models;
• submit content that is unlawful, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit, violent, or that infringes anyone's rights;
• enter other people's personal information, or sensitive information about yourself, that the challenge does not need;
• impersonate anyone or misrepresent your role or age;
• use the Service to cheat, or present AI-generated work as your own where your Institution's academic integrity rules forbid it;
• use the Service in breach of law, including export control and sanctions laws.

Using the Service also requires following the acceptable-use rules of our AI provider, Microsoft, which prohibit generating certain harmful content. We may remove content and limit access to enforce these rules.

6. AI-generated content and evaluations

• You are talking to AI. Challenge partners, evaluations, and the teacher assistant are AI systems, not people.
• AI can be wrong. AI output may be inaccurate, incomplete, biased, or misleading - judging it is part of what the challenges teach. Do not rely on it as professional, medical, legal, financial, or other expert advice.
• Evaluations are formative. Scores and feedback are produced by AI to support learning. They are not certified assessments or grades, and educators should review the conversation before relying on a score. Your Institution, not us, decides whether and how to use them in grading.
• Teacher assistant. The teacher assistant only suggests edits; nothing is saved until the teacher confirms it. Teachers are responsible for reviewing what they publish and assign.
• Training. We do not use your conversations to train AI models; see the Privacy Policy.

7. Safeguarding

The AI may flag conversations that suggest self-harm, abuse, or serious distress. A flagged session pauses and is reviewed by the teacher or Institution responsible, or by us for independent learners; if it is not released, it closes automatically about 24 hours after it started. See the Privacy Policy. Flags can be wrong in both directions. The Service is not a crisis, counseling, or emergency service and does not contact emergency services, parents, or guardians. If you or someone else is in danger, contact local emergency services or a crisis line right away.

8. Your content

• You keep ownership of what you write in the Service and of challenge templates you create ("Your Content"). For Institutional accounts, Your Content may also form part of the Institution's education records.
• License to us. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, process, transmit, display, and evaluate Your Content only to provide, secure, and support the Service for you, your educators, and your Institution. This license ends when Your Content is deleted, except for copies in backups until they expire.
• Shared templates. If a teacher or Institution publishes a template to other users, or if you clone a template from the platform library, the publisher grants other authorized users the right to use and adapt that template within the Service.
• Your responsibility. You confirm you have the rights needed to submit Your Content and that it does not break these Terms or the law.
• Feedback. If you send us suggestions or feedback about the Service, we may use them without restriction or payment. This does not give us rights in Your Content.

9. Our service and intellectual property

The Service, including its software, design, challenge types, library templates we provide, documentation, and the names and logos "AI Challenge Portal" and "cognificance.com", belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual property laws. We give you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service for its intended educational purpose under these Terms. All other rights are reserved. Open-source components are licensed under their own terms, listed in our third-party notices.

10. Beta service, changes, and availability

The Service is in beta. Features may be incomplete, change, or be withdrawn, and it may be interrupted for maintenance, updates, or reasons outside our control. We do not promise any particular availability or that data will never be lost; keep your own copy of anything important. Where practical, we will give advance notice of changes that materially reduce the Service.

11. Fees

The Service is currently provided without charge during the beta. If we introduce paid plans, we will publish the prices and any additional terms before you are charged, and you will not be charged unless you or your Institution agree to them.

12. Third-party services

The Service relies on third-party services, such as Microsoft for sign-in and AI models and Cloudflare for network delivery and abuse checks, which have their own terms. Links to third-party websites are provided for convenience; we are not responsible for their content or practices.

13. Suspension and termination

• You may stop using the Service at any time and ask for your account and personal data to be erased as described in the Privacy Policy. Independent learners can erase their own account in the student portal (Options > Delete your account); if your account belongs to an Institution, ask the Institution. Erasure is permanent: the account cannot be restored, and using the Service again means signing up as a new user.
• We may suspend or end your access if you break these Terms, if your Institution asks us to, if your Institution's agreement ends, if required by law, or to protect the Service or other users. Where reasonable, we will tell you why and give you a chance to fix the problem first.
• We may discontinue the Service with at least [30] days' notice where practical.
• Sections 8 (as to licenses already granted for backups and feedback), 9, and 14 through 19 survive termination.

14. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, and uninterrupted or error-free operation. We do not warrant that AI output or evaluations will be accurate or suitable for any purpose.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any right or remedy that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including the statutory rights of consumers in the European Union and the United Kingdom.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or educational opportunity, arising from or related to the Service or these Terms;
• our total liability for all claims arising from or related to the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the claim arose and [US$100].

These limits do not apply to liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, gross negligence or willful misconduct, or any other liability that cannot be limited by law. Liability to Institutions is governed by the Institution agreement.

16. Indemnity

If you are an adult using the Service for an organization or on your own account, you will defend and indemnify us against third-party claims, and related losses and reasonable costs, arising from your breach of these Terms or your content, to the extent caused by you. This section does not apply to users under 18 or to consumers where the law does not permit it. [COUNSEL: confirm scope; public-sector Institutions often cannot give indemnities.]

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of [GOVERNING JURISDICTION], without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute that is not resolved informally will be decided exclusively by the courts of [VENUE], and you and we consent to their jurisdiction. If you are a consumer living in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you also benefit from the mandatory protections of the law of your country of residence and may bring proceedings in your local courts.

Before starting proceedings, please contact us so we can try to resolve the issue informally within 30 days. [COUNSEL: decide whether to add binding arbitration and a class-action waiver for US users; this draft deliberately omits them because many users are minors and Institutions.]

18. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms. We will post changes on this page and update the version and date above. If a change is material, we will tell you in the Service and ask you to accept the new version the next time you sign in; if you do not accept, you may stop using the Service. Changes do not apply retroactively.

19. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and any Institution agreement are the whole agreement about the Service between you and us.
• Severability. If any part of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.
• No waiver. Not enforcing a term is not a waiver of it.
• Assignment. You may not transfer these Terms. We may transfer them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, subject to the Privacy Policy.
• Force majeure. We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• Notices. We may give you notices in the Service or by email. You may give us notices through the contact form or at [LEGAL NOTICES EMAIL OR ADDRESS].
• Language. These Terms are written in English. Translations are for convenience; the English version controls to the extent permitted by law.

20. Contact

[LEGAL ENTITY NAME], [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. Questions about these Terms: contact cognificance.com.