The agreement, in plain words.

1. This agreement

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a contract between you and Esja Ventures Ltd ("Told", "we", "us"), which operates the Told service. By creating an account or using Told, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you're using Told on behalf of someone else or an organisation, you confirm you're authorised to accept these Terms for them. You must be at least 18 years old to use Told.

2. What we provide

Told is software that interviews a person about their life, drafts prose from their answers in their own voice and phrasing, and helps you assemble, export, and print a finished book — including a way to attach the original recording to a chapter so it can be played back. We may add, change, or remove features as the product evolves, and Told is currently offered as a closed beta (see §10).

3. Your account

• Keep your login credentials confidential; you're responsible for activity under your account.
• Give us accurate information and keep it current.
• Tell us promptly at [email protected] if you suspect unauthorised use.
• If you enable at-rest encryption on a self-managed deployment, keep your encryption key backed up — without it, encrypted content can't be recovered, even by us.

4. You own your book

You own the material you provide (your answers, recordings, and uploads) and the AI-drafted prose generated from it. As between you and us, all rights in your content and your finished book are yours. We claim no ownership of your content or output. You're free to keep, edit, export, print, and publish your book, including commercially.

5. The licence you give us (only to run the service)

To operate Told, we need your permission to process your content — for example, to store it, send it to our AI providers so they can interview and draft, transcribe your audio, render your book, and let contributors you invite take part. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive licence to do these things solely to provide the service to you. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies we're required to keep by law or that persist briefly in encrypted backups. We do not use your content to train AI models, and we don't use it for advertising.

6. AI output

Told uses AI to interview and to draft prose. It's designed to shape what was actually said and never to fabricate facts, but AI output can still be imperfect, incomplete, or inaccurate. You are responsible for reviewing and editing drafts before you rely on them, print them, or publish them. Told is not a substitute for professional advice of any kind.

7. Your responsibilities

• Accuracy and fairness to others. A memoir names real people. You're responsible for what you write and publish about living third parties, including obligations around defamation and privacy. Consider anonymising identifiable people portrayed negatively before printing or sharing.
• Rights to what you upload. Only upload content you have the right to use — including photos, recordings, and words provided by others.
• Lawful use. Use Told in compliance with applicable law.

8. Contributors and people in the story

• Contributors must be adults who can consent to taking part. Only invite people who agree to contribute.
• When you invite a contributor, you're responsible for having their agreement to record and use their answers in the book.
• Don't use Told to collect a child's own information without a parent or guardian's involvement.

9. Acceptable use

Don't use Told to:

• break the law, infringe others' rights, or invade someone's privacy;
• impersonate someone, or misrepresent another living person's words as their own without their consent;
• upload malware, attempt to breach or overload the service, circumvent security or rate limits, or access accounts or content that aren't yours;
• scrape, resell, or build a competing dataset from the service; or
• create content that is unlawful, harassing, or abusive toward others.

10. Beta, payment & refunds

Told is currently in closed beta, offered to a limited group of families. Beta features may change or be unstable, and access is at our discretion.

When paid plans launch, pricing and what's included will be shown before you buy, and payments will be handled by a third-party payment processor. Told is designed around a one-time price for your book rather than an open-ended subscription. Your first year of voice hosting is included; keeping recordings online after that is an optional low monthly fee you can cancel at any time, and your book always remains yours to keep and export. Every purchase comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee from the date of purchase. Additional refund terms will be presented at the point of purchase and, once you buy, form part of this agreement. Statutory rights you have as a consumer are unaffected.

11. Printed books

Physical books are printed and shipped through a print partner. Production times, shipping, and any print-quality guarantees will be shown at the time of order. You're responsible for reviewing and approving your book's content before it goes to print — once printed, a book reflects the text you approved.

12. Digital legacy

A life story matters most after we're gone. You can name legacy contacts on a project — the people who should receive the finished story. On documented notice, we can provide your export to your named contacts through a manual, verified process. Keep any encryption key with your estate so your story stays readable. Automated, verified succession is on our roadmap.

13. Suspension & termination

You can stop using Told and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate access if you materially breach these Terms (for example, the acceptable-use rules), or where necessary to protect the service or other people — and, where practical, we'll give you notice and a chance to put things right. If we ever discontinue Told, we'll give you reasonable notice and a window to export your content.

14. Disclaimers

Told is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, to the fullest extent permitted by law — including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don't warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that AI output will be accurate. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that can't be excluded under applicable law, including your non-excludable statutory consumer rights.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Told and Esja Ventures Ltd won't be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for the service in the 12 months before the claim, or £100. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that can't be limited by law.

16. Governing law & disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of England & Wales, and the courts of England & Wales have jurisdiction — except that, if you're a consumer resident elsewhere, you keep the benefit of any mandatory protections and the courts available to you under the law of your home country. We'd always rather resolve things directly first, so please contact us before starting formal proceedings.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as Told evolves. When we make a material change, we'll update the "last updated" date and, for significant changes, notify you. If you keep using Told after a change takes effect, you accept the updated Terms; if you don't agree, you can stop using Told and delete your account.

18. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email [email protected]. Told is operated by Esja Ventures Ltd, registered in England & Wales.

See also our Privacy Policy and Security page.