Terms of Use
These terms apply when you use BirdStory (“BirdStory”, “we”, “us” or “our”). By creating an account or using the service, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use BirdStory.
1. What BirdStory is, and is not
BirdStory is a practical, non-clinical tool for recognising lived experiences, exploring possible patterns and support needs, and communicating what helps. It is not a diagnostic assessment, medical advice, therapy or crisis support, and it is not a substitute for any of those. Nothing in BirdStory tells you what condition you or anyone else has. You remain the authority on what fits you. If you are worried about your health or safety, or someone else’s, please contact a qualified professional or local emergency or crisis services.
2. Your account
- Availability. BirdStory accounts and personalised services (profiles, Field Guides, Quick Reads, Guided Discovery, sharing and the Guide Pack) are not currently offered in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area. Public informational pages remain accessible.
- BirdStory account holders must be 18 or older at launch. You confirm this when you set up your account; we do not verify your age beyond that confirmation. A parent, guardian or other responsible adult can create a profile about someone under 18 from their own account (see section 3).
- Give us a working email address. BirdStory signs you in with a link sent to that address, so keep your email account secure. You are responsible for activity on your account.
- Free accounts can hold up to four profiles. Saved Experiences, Wild Words and Guided Discovery are free.
3. Profiles about another person
You can create a profile for someone else, including a child, a young person or an adult you support. If you do:
- You are responsible for the information you enter about them, you confirm you are entitled to provide it, and you will consider that person’s privacy. You are also responsible for deciding whether and with whom to share their guide.
- Adult. The adult the profile is about must directly approve the creation of the profile before substantive information about them is added.
- Child or young person. Where that profile type is available, you must confirm that you are the child’s or young person’s parent or legal guardian, or that you have permission from their parent or legal guardian.
- Creating a profile about another person does not remove that person’s privacy rights, and BirdStory may respond to valid privacy requests about information held about them (see the Privacy Policy).
- The account holder controls the account and its profiles. We do not independently verify your relationship to the person. For a profile about someone else you choose a broad life-stage category (adult, young person or teenager, or child); it is not a date of birth or an exact age, and we do not ask for ID or guardian documents.
4. Your content
You keep any rights you have in the content you enter and the choices you make (“your content”). You give BirdStory a limited licence to store, process and use your content, including sending it to our service providers such as the AI service described in the Privacy Policy, only so we can operate the service for you: to build your patterns, generate guides and Quick Reads, let you download and share them, keep the service secure and provide support. You confirm you have the right to give us this licence for anything you enter, including information about another person.
5. BirdStory’s content
BirdStory’s Experience library, Wild Words, Birds and other names and descriptions, taxonomy and structure, illustrations, design, and the way generated guides are organised belong to BirdStory or its licensors. We give you a personal, non-exclusive licence to use them through the service for your own purposes, and to use guides generated for you as described below. You may not copy, scrape, resell or republish the library or other BirdStory content, or build a competing product from it.
6. Generated guides and Quick Reads
- Guides are generated with the help of an AI service from what you have saved. They describe possible patterns and ideas that may help. They are suggestions, not facts, and may be incomplete, mistaken or not fit you. Please review a guide, edit it, and decide for yourself what is true.
- Do not treat a guide as a diagnosis, a clinical assessment, medical or therapeutic advice, or a reason to stop or change professional care. Do not present it to others as an assessment or report.
- You may use the guides generated for you, and Quick Reads you build, for your own personal, non-commercial purposes, including sharing them with people you choose.
7. Sharing and downloads
Sharing is your choice and your responsibility. A guide may contain personal information about you or someone else. Anyone who receives a share link can open it and may forward it. Revoking a link stops future access through that link, but we cannot recall copies that someone has already saved, printed or passed on. A downloaded guide or PDF is outside BirdStory. BirdStory is designed to reduce unnecessary identification: profiles can use a first name or nickname, and guides about someone else use limited name information by default. This reduces exposure, but a guide may still contain personal information that could identify the person from context. Please share thoughtfully, especially a guide about another person or a child.
8. The Guide Pack
- The Guide Pack is a one-time purchase at the price shown at checkout. There is no subscription and no automatic renewal.
- It applies to your whole account, not to a single profile, and has no expiry while BirdStory continues to operate. If we plan to permanently close BirdStory, we will aim to give reasonable notice where reasonably practicable so you have an opportunity to download available guides.
- It lets you create and update Personal and Supporter Guides (using your guide creations or updates) and create Quick Reads. It buys that capacity; it is not a rental of guides already generated. Guides generated for you remain available to you, and you can download and share them, even if a later purchase is refunded.
- Each Guide Pack includes 12 guide creations or updates, shared across Personal and Supporter Guides and every profile on the account, with no expiry. Creating or updating one Personal or Supporter Guide counts as one; creating both counts as two. A new AI synthesis of a guide is what uses one; saving Experiences, editing, viewing, sharing and downloading do not, and neither do failed builds or technical retries. Quick Reads are unlimited and do not use one.
- If you have used all of them, you can ask us for four extra guide creations or updates at no charge, once per account. We add these manually on request. After those, you can purchase another Guide Pack; each purchase adds its own 12. Using up your allowance does not remove your existing guides, sharing or downloads.
- Refunds are covered by our Refund Policy.
9. Acceptable use
Do not use BirdStory to break the law, to harass or harm anyone, to enter information about someone you have no good reason to hold information about, to access another person’s account, to interfere with or overload the service, to bypass limits such as the generation allowance, or to scrape or copy BirdStory content.
10. Changes, suspension and ending your account
- We may change or improve BirdStory, and may change these terms. We will tell you about material changes; continuing to use BirdStory after a change means you accept it.
- We may suspend or end an account that breaks these terms or puts others or the service at risk.
- You can delete a profile or your whole account at any time in BirdStory. Deleting removes the related profiles, saved data, guides (and their share links) and Quick Reads, as described in the Privacy Policy. Deletion is permanent and does not by itself entitle you to a refund.
11. Service availability
We aim to keep BirdStory available, but we do not promise it will always be uninterrupted or error-free. Features, including the AI service we rely on, may change or occasionally be unavailable.
12. Disclaimers and liability
BirdStory is provided as a tool for self-understanding and communication. We do not guarantee that its content or generated outputs will be complete, accurate or suitable for every person or situation. You remain responsible for deciding how to use BirdStory and its outputs.
To the extent permitted by law, BirdStory is not responsible for loss arising solely from reliance on generated suggestions, or from decisions made by you or another person based on them.
Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any consumer guarantee, right or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded or restricted.
13. Governing law and contact
These terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand. If consumer laws in the country where you live give you rights that cannot legally be excluded, those rights continue to apply.
Questions about these terms can be sent to BirdStory using the contact details below. Contact: [email protected].