Terms & Conditions

Agreement to these terms

These Terms & Conditions (“Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and FamilyTellings (“we”, “us”, “our”), the operator of the FamilyTellings service and website. They govern your use of the website, the story-making service, and everything we provide along with it (together, the “Service”).

By creating an account, ticking the acceptance box at sign-up, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service. If anything here is unclear, write to us before using the Service.

Who may use FamilyTellings

FamilyTellings is made for adults. You must be at least 18 years old, and legally able to enter into this agreement, to make an account. We confirm your age at sign-up and we may ask for proof if we have reason to doubt it.

There are no child accounts. Children appear in the Service only as the recipients of stories an adult makes for them. If you use the Service on behalf of a family, a class, or an organisation, you confirm that you have authority to accept these Terms for it.

Your account

FamilyTellings has no passwords. You sign in with a single-use link we email to you, and you stay signed in on that device until you sign out or have not visited for 60 days. Because your inbox is the key to your account, you agree to use an email address that is yours, to keep that inbox secure, to sign out on shared devices, and to tell us promptly if you believe someone else has accessed your account. You are responsible for what happens in your account unless the law says otherwise.

We may suspend or close accounts that break these Terms, that create risk for other people, or that we are required to act on. If we can, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond.

What FamilyTellings does

FamilyTellings turns a short, true memory – three to five sentences in English, up to 250 words, that you write or dictate – into a personalised, illustrated children's story. The Service works in English only for now: memories, stories, and narration. Each story is a complete fourteen-part keepsake: a cover, a dedication, and twelve illustrated pages built around one consistent young hero. You choose the hero, compare three tellings, pick the visual world, and decide how closely the story follows your memory. You can read the finished story in the web reader, save the keepsake PDF, and watch the gently narrated moving story.

The Service is software-assisted and evolving. We may add, change, or retire features. We do not promise that every story will be exactly what you imagined: generated text and pictures can be imperfect or surprising, so please review a story before you print, share, or gift it. Nothing in these Terms limits rights you have under consumer law.

Your memories and your stories

Your memory is yours. The words you write or dictate belong to you. So do the stories generated from them: as between you and us, you own the personalised stories made for you, and you may keep, print, share, and gift them, including to family and classrooms.

To make all of that possible, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt, and display the content you submit – and to do the same with generated text, illustrations, and narration – for the purpose of operating, securing, and improving the Service. This licence ends when your content is deleted, except for copies kept briefly in backups or where the law requires retention.

You confirm that you have the rights needed to submit what you submit: the memory is yours or you have permission to use it, and it does not include anyone's private or sensitive information without their consent. Please keep children's details minimal – a first name and an age band are all the Service asks for.

No health details. Stories here leave out health and medical information about anyone – illness, injuries, disabilities, diagnoses, treatments, medication, mental health, or pregnancy. Please do not include them in a memory. Safety review sends back a memory that mentions them so you can tell the same moment without them, and the stories we generate do not include them.

Some AI providers' terms can affect rights in generated media. We disclose the providers we use and the rights we can pass to you; where provider terms do not grant transferable rights, we do not claim to grant them ourselves.

How AI is used

Story text, illustrations, and narration are produced with the help of third-party AI model providers. To generate your keepsake, the memory you submit and the choices you make (hero, age band, creative freedom, visual direction) are sent to the story-text and safety-review provider; the illustration provider receives picture descriptions written for each page, and the narration provider receives the text of each page. Our Privacy Policy explains what is shared and why.

Provider retention and training settings vary by model. Our Privacy Policy lists the providers and data categories involved. We do not promise that a provider never retains or trains on data unless that provider's account settings and terms establish it. AI output is probabilistic: it can be inaccurate, repetitive, or unexpected. You use generated text and images knowing this, and you decide what finally goes into your keepsake.

Acceptable use

The Service exists for making family keepsakes. You agree not to use it to:

• break any law, or infringe the rights, privacy, or dignity of others;
• submit content that sexualises or exploits children, or that promotes violence, hatred, or self-harm;
• submit another person's private or sensitive information without their consent, or to impersonate anyone;
• probe, reverse engineer, scrape, mirror, or automate access to the Service, or try to reach other people's accounts or data;
• bypass safety review, fair-use limits, or any access control, or resell the Service without our written permission;
• put instructions for the AI into a memory or a name – for example asking it to ignore its rules, change its role, or produce something other than a children's story. A memory must only describe what happened.

We may investigate misuse, remove content, and suspend or end accounts that break these rules, and we may take steps required by law.

Safety review

Every memory passes through automated safety review before a story is made. Memories that trip a safety rule – including memories that mention health or medical details, are not in English, are longer than 250 words, or contain instructions for the AI – can be revised and checked again; the Service will say what needs to change. We may also refuse or remove content that breaks these Terms or the law. We do not promise to pre-screen everything, and safety review is not a substitute for your own judgement – you remain the editor of your family's story.

Membership and billing

Plans and credits. Every new account starts on the Free plan: 1 story credit at no charge and no card required, plus 3 preview credits granted separately at sign-up. The Free plan lasts for the first month after sign-up and does not renew. Standard is $49/month and includes 30 story credits. Plus is $99/month and includes 120 story credits. One story credit creates one complete story: three draft tellings to choose from, one selected illustrated story, and its initial narration. One preview credit creates a text-only draft set with no illustrations or narration. Turning a preview into a complete story uses one story credit and reuses the drafts you already accepted; the preview credit stays spent. Preview credits cannot be used for illustrations, narration, or complete stories. You can upgrade to a paid plan at any time.

Free-plan credits are one-time: unused ones end one month after sign-up, or earlier when you upgrade to a paid plan. On a paid plan, unused credits expire at the end of each paid billing period and do not roll over. Reading, downloading, and replaying stories already in your library never uses credits. The exact reset date is shown in your account.

Daily story limit. On a paid plan you can start up to one-tenth of the plan's monthly stories per day – 3 a day on Standard and 12 a day on Plus – so a month's allowance is spread over at least 10 days. The count resets at midnight UTC; a story you cancel, whose credit comes back, does not count, and retrying a failed story does not start a new one. The limit does not extend a billing period: credits not used by the end of a period end with it, as described above. Separately, to protect the Service from abuse and runaway costs, we may briefly pause new generation for an account or for everyone; paused work uses no credit and can continue once the pause lifts.

The following applies to every paid plan:

• Automatic renewal. Membership is a subscription that renews automatically every month at the plan price shown at checkout, plus any applicable tax, until you cancel. You are charged when you subscribe and again on the same day each month. There is no minimum term. Before checkout we show these terms next to the checkout button and ask you to agree to them; we keep a record of that agreement.
• Cancelling. You can cancel any time online from your account page – no call or email is needed. Cancellation stops the next payment and takes effect at the end of your current paid period; the stories you made remain available afterwards under our storage policy. We confirm every cancellation by email.
• Payments are processed by our payment provider (Lemon Squeezy). We do not store full card details. Applicable taxes are shown at checkout.
• If a renewal payment fails, new generation pauses until payment succeeds; your existing stories stay readable and downloadable.
• Plan changes take effect at the next renewal so billing stays exact. We will tell you before any price change takes effect, and where the law requires it we will ask for your renewed consent.

Refunds

If a charge ever looks wrong – a duplicate, a charge after a cancellation, or a story we could not deliver – write to us and we will make it right. Requests made within fourteen days of a charge are reviewed promptly and are generally honoured. If a technical failure prevents us from delivering the generation you paid for, the reserved credit is restored automatically and you can try again without paying twice for the same failed generation. Statutory withdrawal and refund rights in your jurisdiction are unaffected, and nothing in these Terms limits them.

Open item: the exact refund window, partial-period treatment, and dispute policy are business decisions to be finalised with counsel before launch.

Ending your membership and deleting your account

You can cancel membership at any time from your account, and you can delete your account from the account page by confirming; for your protection, deletion needs a sign-in from the last few minutes, so we may email you a fresh sign-in link first. Deletion stops future billing, revokes your sessions, and permanently removes stored memories, stories, and media; a minimal deletion record of billing and consent is kept for a limited time, as described in the Privacy Policy, and copies may persist briefly in secured backups. An unfinished story with no activity for 30 days is deleted with its drafts; finished stories are kept for as long as your account exists. Keepsake files you already downloaded to your own devices stay yours.

We may suspend or terminate your access if you seriously or repeatedly break these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if the Service is discontinued. Where we can, we will give you notice and a way to retrieve your stories first.

Our intellectual property

The Service itself – its software, design, illustrations commissioned by us, written copy, and the FamilyTellings name and marks – belongs to us or our licensors. While your stories are yours (see “Your memories and your stories”), the Service is licensed to you, not sold: you receive a limited, personal, non-transferable right to use it under these Terms. Please do not copy, resell, or create derivative services from it.

If you send us an idea or suggestion, we may use it freely – without obligation to you – to make the Service better.

Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the extent the law allows, we give no warranties beyond those stated in these Terms: we do not promise that generated stories will be error-free or match every expectation, that the Service will always be available, or that content will be preserved exactly as generated.

To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential losses arising from the Service, and our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim (or fifty US dollars if you paid nothing). Some jurisdictions do not allow these limitations, so they apply only to the extent permitted – your statutory consumer rights are never excluded.

Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to be responsible for claims brought against us that arise from content you submit or from your misuse of the Service. This does not apply where consumer law makes it unenforceable.

Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms as the Service evolves. The version number and effective date at the top of this page always show the current text, and your account records which version you accepted at sign-up. For material changes we will give you notice – by email or inside the Service – before they take effect, and where the law requires it we will ask for your renewed consent. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, you accept the updated Terms.

Governing law and disputes

If something goes wrong, please write to us first: most problems are best solved in conversation. Nothing in this section limits statutory consumer rights or the right to bring a complaint to a consumer protection authority.

Open item: the governing law and venue for disputes are deliberately left unannounced in this draft and will be published before launch.

Contact us

Questions about these Terms, or anything about your account and stories, can be sent to support@familytellings.com. We read everything, and we answer in plain words.

Related document: Privacy Policy.