Terms of Service

1. Service Description

ACI Writer (“the Service”) is an AI-powered research platform operated by ACI Writer (“we,” “us,” “our”). The Service uses multiple large language models (“LLMs”) orchestrated through a multi-stage research pipeline to generate, verify, and format research articles.

Our platform also offers a peer-review assistance tool that produces independent review drafts using multi-model analysis. Both services are designed to augment human researchers, not to replace professional judgment or peer review.

2. User Responsibilities

By using the Service, you agree to:

• Provide accurate registration information and maintain the security of your account credentials.
• Use generated content responsibly and in compliance with the publication policies of any target journal.
• Disclose the use of AI-assisted tools when submitting work to journals, conferences, or other academic venues, in accordance with their specific guidelines.
• Review and verify all AI-generated content before submission, taking full responsibility for accuracy and correctness.
• Comply with all applicable laws and regulations governing your use of the Service.
• Not attempt to circumvent usage limits, access controls, or security measures.

3. AI-Generated Content Disclaimer

All articles produced by ACI Writer are generated by AI models. While we employ a rigorous 10-stage verification pipeline including adversarial review, factual verification, and statistical validation, AI-generated content may contain errors, hallucinations, fabricated citations, or inaccuracies.

You acknowledge that:

• Generated articles serve as research drafts and starting points, not finished publications.
• You bear sole responsibility for verifying all claims, citations, data, and conclusions before use.
• ACI Writer does not guarantee the factual accuracy, originality, or suitability of any generated content for any particular purpose.
• Verification scores and quality grades are internal quality metrics and do not constitute a guarantee of publication readiness.

4. Review Tool Disclaimer

The peer-review assistance tool generates independent review drafts to help reviewers formulate their assessments. You acknowledge that:

• AI-generated reviews are advisory drafts, not authoritative evaluations.
• You must exercise your own professional judgment when using review drafts as a basis for your final review.
• Submitting an AI-generated review without substantial personal review and modification may violate journal policies.
• We are not responsible for any consequences arising from the use or misuse of generated reviews.

5. Intellectual Property

You retain ownership of your input data, including topics, hypotheses, data summaries, and reference materials you provide. Generated articles are provided to you under a perpetual, non-exclusive license for academic and research purposes.

We retain the right to use anonymized, aggregated usage data to improve our models, pipeline accuracy, and quality metrics. We will never publish or share your individual research inputs or generated articles without your explicit consent.

6. Data Handling

Your data is processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Key points include:

• Article generation inputs and outputs are stored encrypted at rest using AES-256 encryption.
• Data is transmitted over TLS 1.3 encrypted connections.
• Your content is sent to third-party LLM providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and others) for processing. These providers have their own data handling policies.
• We do not sell or share your personal data with third parties for marketing purposes.

7. Payment & Refunds

ACI Writer operates on a credit-based system. Your first article generation is free. Additional credits may be purchased through our pricing page.

• All payments are processed securely through Stripe. We do not store your payment card information.
• Credits are non-transferable and do not expire.
• Refunds may be issued at our discretion if the Service fails to generate an article due to a system error. Credits consumed during successful generation are non-refundable.
• We reserve the right to modify pricing with 30 days' notice to existing users.

8. Liability Limitations

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

• The Service is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied.
• We disclaim all warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
• We shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the Service.
• Our total liability for any claim arising from use of the Service shall not exceed the amount you paid us in the twelve months preceding the claim.
• We are not liable for damages resulting from publication rejections, academic disputes, retracted papers, or other consequences of using AI-generated content.

9. Credential Handling

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials. We implement industry-standard security measures including:

• Passwords are hashed using bcrypt with appropriate salt rounds.
• Authentication tokens (JWT) expire after a configurable period and must be refreshed.
• Optional phone-based OTP verification for additional security.
• You must notify us immediately of any unauthorized access to your account.

10. Prohibited Uses

You may not use the Service to:

• Generate fraudulent research, fabricate data, or create misleading academic publications.
• Submit generated content as your own original work without appropriate AI-use disclosure.
• Circumvent journal policies regarding AI-assisted authorship.
• Reverse-engineer, scrape, or extract our pipeline logic, prompts, or model configurations.
• Use the Service for any illegal, harmful, or abusive purpose.
• Create accounts using false identities or impersonate other researchers.
• Resell, sublicense, or redistribute generated content as a competing service.

11. Account Termination

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your account at our discretion if you violate these Terms. Upon termination:

• You may request an export of your generated articles within 30 days of termination.
• Unused credits are forfeited unless termination was initiated by us without cause, in which case a pro-rata refund may be issued.
• Your obligation to comply with these Terms survives termination for any content previously generated.

You may delete your account at any time through the Settings page. Account deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed.

12. Governing Law

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. Any disputes arising under these Terms shall be resolved through binding arbitration in accordance with the rules of the American Arbitration Association, conducted in the English language.