Terms of Service & EULA

Welcome to Plushie ("Plushie," "we," "our," or "us"). These Terms of Service and End User License Agreement ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the Plushie mobile application, website, and related services (collectively, the "Services").

By downloading, accessing, or using the Services, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Services.

1. Eligibility

The minimum age to use Plushie is 13 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico; 16 in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland; and 18 elsewhere. We ask your age at sign-up and do not permit accounts below the applicable minimum.

Users under 18 years of age are excluded from research participation and may not grant the research derivative licence in Section 5.

By using the Services, you represent and warrant that:

• you are legally permitted to use the Services;
• the information you provide is accurate;
• you will comply with these Terms and all applicable laws.

2. AI Companion Disclosure

Plushie is an AI-powered companion system. You acknowledge and agree that:

• Plushie conversations are generated by artificial intelligence;
• responses may be inaccurate, fictional, incomplete, emotionally inappropriate, or unexpected;
• Plushie is not a human, therapist, medical professional, emergency service, or legal advisor;
• Plushie should not be relied upon for medical, mental health, financial, legal, or safety-critical decisions.

If you are experiencing a medical or mental health emergency, contact local emergency services or a qualified professional immediately.

3. License Grant

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, Plushie grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to install and use the Services for personal, non-commercial use.

You may not:

• copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, or sublicense the Services;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code;
• use the Services to build competing products or AI models;
• exploit bugs, payment systems, or virtual economies;
• use bots, automation, or unauthorized third-party software;
• use the Services in violation of applicable law.

All rights not expressly granted are reserved by Plushie.

4. User Accounts

You may need to create an account to use certain features. You are responsible for maintaining account security, all activities occurring under your account, and maintaining accurate account information.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms or pose risk to users, Plushie, or third parties.

5. User Content & Research Licensing

You may provide text, prompts, images, profile information, conversations, or other content ("User Content").

You retain ownership of your User Content.

By submitting User Content, you grant Plushie a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (sublicensable to service providers acting on our behalf) to host, store, process, reproduce, modify, adapt, display, and use such content solely for operating, improving, securing, and providing the Services. Conversations include both your User Content and companion responses generated by Plushie; companion outputs and system personalities remain the intellectual property of Plushie, licensed to you for personal use during your interaction with the Services.

Research and publication. Except as required by law, we will not distribute or publish your User Content, or datasets derived from it, outside Plushie and its service providers unless you have separately opted in to research participation as described in our Privacy Policy. Where you have opted in, you grant Plushie a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to process and transform your User Content into research derivatives, and to reproduce, adapt, extract and distribute those research derivatives — meaning conversation data and derived analytical artifacts (including conversation text rewritten by an AI model, question-and-answer items derived from that rewritten text, structured behavioral or psychological profiles, and generated personas) that we have processed to remove or transform direct identifiers and reduce re-identification risk ("research derivatives") — to named academic or research institutions for research purposes, and to permit those named research recipients to reproduce and adapt those derivatives for the stated research purpose under a written agreement that prohibits re-identification and onward redistribution.

This licence does not extend to, and we do not distribute, your original messages or your companion's original replies, your journal entries or mood check-ins, the images you upload, or any identifier that could match a research derivative back to your account. Our Privacy Policy sets out what a research release contains and what it never contains.

You also grant Plushie and those recipients the right to publish research findings based on those derivatives — aggregate results, statistical analyses, model performance and conclusions — provided the publication does not identify you and does not reasonably permit you to be identified. Publishing verbatim or near-verbatim conversation text, individual-level synthetic transcripts, personas, benchmark items, or other record-level material in public papers, repositories, presentations or appendices is not authorised by this licence and requires separate consent. For the avoidance of doubt, "near-verbatim" includes any passage whose string similarity to the corresponding rewritten turn, or to your original message, exceeds a ratio of 0.90 for turns of 40 or more characters; shorter turns, and all other record-level material, remain outside this licence regardless of any similarity measurement.

This license survives termination of your account with respect to derivatives already distributed under a research agreement, which we may be unable to recall; our Privacy Policy states how long those datasets are retained before deletion. We do not distribute User Content or derivatives of it for open public download. We do not represent that such derivatives can never be re-associated with you; the limitations described in our Privacy Policy apply. You may withdraw research consent at any time, after which we will not include your User Content or derived profiles in any new research distribution.

Information about other people. Conversations often mention other people. You should not share information about others that they would not want stored. We do not seek to identify or contact people who are not Plushie users, and information about others is retained only as part of your conversation history and the memory derived from it.

You represent and warrant that you own or have permission to submit User Content, that it does not violate laws or third-party rights, and that it contains no unlawful, abusive, exploitative, or harmful material.

We may remove content or restrict accounts at our discretion.

6. AI Memory & Personalization

Plushie may store conversations, preferences, behavioral signals, personality inferences, and relationship progression data to personalize interactions. You understand that:

• memory systems may retain information you provide;
• generated memories or summaries may be incorrect;
• deleting content may not immediately remove all backups or derived system data.

Additional details are provided in our Privacy Policy.

7. Virtual Currency & Digital Items

The Services may include virtual currencies, points, gems, coins, XP, cosmetic items, unlockables, or other digital goods ("Virtual Items").

Virtual Items:

• have no monetary value;
• are licensed, not owned;
• are non-transferable;
• are non-refundable except where required by law.

Plushie may modify, rebalance, remove, or discontinue Virtual Items at any time without liability.

You may not:

• sell or trade Virtual Items;
• exchange Virtual Items for real currency;
• exploit bugs or loopholes affecting the virtual economy.

8. Subscriptions & Billing

Certain features may require a paid subscription ("Subscription"). Subscriptions automatically renew unless canceled, are billed through your platform provider (Apple App Store, Google Play, etc.), and may vary by region and platform.

You authorize the applicable platform to charge your payment method for recurring subscription fees. You may cancel at any time through your platform account settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.

Except where required by law, payments are non-refundable, partial billing periods are not refunded, and unused Virtual Items are not refundable. We reserve the right to change pricing, features, or subscription structures with reasonable notice.

9. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

• harass, abuse, threaten, or exploit others;
• generate unlawful, hateful, sexual, or harmful content;
• attempt prompt injection, model extraction, or security attacks;
• upload malicious code or malware;
• impersonate others;
• use Plushie for illegal activity.

We may investigate and take action against violations, including suspension, deletion, or reporting to authorities.

10. Intellectual Property

The Services, including all software, designs, graphics, character personalities, companion output, logos, AI systems, animations, and audiovisual elements, are owned by Plushie or its licensors and protected by intellectual property laws.

Except as expressly permitted, you may not use Plushie intellectual property without prior written consent.

11. Third-Party Services

The Services may integrate with third-party platforms, payment processors, analytics providers, or AI infrastructure providers. We are not responsible for third-party services, content, or availability. Your use of third-party services may be subject to separate terms.

12. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access at any time, with or without notice, if:

• you violate these Terms;
• your conduct creates risk or liability;
• required by law;
• necessary for security or operational reasons.

Upon termination, your license ends immediately, and access to Virtual Items and account data may be lost. Deletion of your personal information following termination is described in our Privacy Policy.

13. Disclaimers

THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE."

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PLUSHIE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, AND ERROR-FREE OPERATION.

We do not guarantee uninterrupted access or specific emotional, social, or psychological outcomes from using Plushie.

14. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PLUSHIE AND ITS AFFILIATES SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES.

IN NO EVENT SHALL OUR TOTAL LIABILITY EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO PLUSHIE IN THE PREVIOUS 12 MONTHS, OR USD $100.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain liability limitations, so portions of this section may not apply to you.

15. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Plushie, its affiliates, employees, officers, and partners from claims, liabilities, damages, and expenses arising from:

• your use of the Services;
• your User Content;
• your violation of these Terms;
• your violation of applicable law or third-party rights.

16. Arbitration & Class Action Waiver

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY.

You and Plushie agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Services shall be resolved through binding individual arbitration, except where prohibited by law.

You waive any right to participate in class actions, class arbitrations, or representative proceedings.

Arbitration shall be conducted under the rules of the American Arbitration Association in the State of New York unless otherwise required by applicable law.

You may opt out of arbitration within 30 days of first accepting these Terms by emailing plushiehelp@gmail.com.

Nothing in this section limits any right you have to lodge a complaint with a data protection or consumer protection authority, or any right that applicable mandatory consumer law in your country of residence gives you and that cannot be waived by agreement.

17. Governing Law

These Terms shall be governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to conflict of law principles, except where mandatory law in your country of residence provides otherwise.

18. Changes to the Terms

We may modify these Terms from time to time. If changes are material, we will notify users through the Services or by other reasonable means.

Where a change materially expands how we use User Content you have already submitted, we will apply the change to that content only with your affirmative consent; continued use alone will not constitute acceptance of such a change.

19. App Store Terms

If you downloaded the app from Apple's App Store:

• Apple is not responsible for the Services;
• Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support;
• Apple is a third-party beneficiary of these Terms.

If you downloaded the app through Google Play, additional Google Play terms may apply.

20. Contact

If you have questions regarding these Terms, contact: plushiehelp@gmail.com