CineMake Terms of Service

Version: v1.7.0

CineMake Terms of Service

Effective Date: May 13, 2026 Version: 1.7.0

  1. Definitions

    1. "CineMake," "we," "us," "our" means the CineMake online platform and operator. "User," "you" means any person or entity that creates an account or uses the Service. "Credits" (CMC) are CineMake metering units that are debited for renders and other metered features. "Subscription" means a recurring plan with included features and/or Credits. "Credit Pack" means a one-time purchase of Credits with break-the-seal refund rights. "Providers" means upstream vendors and infrastructure used by CineMake, including OpenAI, Google (Veo/Vertex AI), Google Cloud Storage, Supabase, Clerk, Vercel, and our payment processor. "Payment Processor" means our designated Merchant-of-Record that handles checkout, payments, taxes, and refunds. "Ledger" means CineMake's append-only audit trail of material events (including policy versions accepted, timestamps, IP address, user agent, and applicable provider notices). "AI System" means any artificial intelligence model or system used by or through the Service, including large language models and generative video models.

  2. Contract Formation; Clickwrap Consent; Changes

    1. Assent. You accept these Terms by selecting an unchecked consent box and clicking a button labeled "Agree," "Continue," or similar, on a conspicuous screen that links to these Terms and our Privacy and Refund Policies. Your assent is recorded in the Ledger. Courts have upheld clickwrap agreements formed by an active checkbox and confirm button where terms are reasonably presented.
    2. Notice and prominence. Our consent screen uses a blocking flow on web and mobile, with accessible, underlined links and visible focus styles. Similar blocking, prominent interfaces were held sufficient to put users on reasonable notice in recent appellate rulings.
    3. Changes. We may update these Terms. Material changes require re-acceptance via a blocking screen before continued use; otherwise, updates take effect upon posting and your continued use constitutes acceptance. The Ledger stores the version you accepted. (Clickwrap updates of this kind have been enforced where notice and assent are clear.)
    4. Provider Terms Updates. OpenAI and Google may update their terms from time to time. Per OpenAI's Terms of Use (effective January 1, 2026), material changes require 30 days' advance notice. Per Google Cloud Terms of Service (last modified October 13, 2025), material URL Terms updates become effective 30 days after posting. We will notify you of material Provider changes that affect your use of the Service.

  3. Eligibility; Accounts

    1. Minimum age. You must be at least 18 years of age to create an account or use the Service. By creating an account, you represent and warrant that you are 18 or older. CineMake uses enterprise AI services (including Google Vertex AI / Veo) that are designed for adult commercial use. We do not knowingly collect personal information from or direct the Service to anyone under 18. If we learn that a user is under 18, we may immediately suspend or terminate their account.
    2. Account security. Accounts are provisioned through Clerk; you are responsible for safeguarding credentials and enabling available security measures (e.g., MFA).

  4. Service; Credits; Moderation

    1. Service. CineMake provides AI-assisted video creation and related tools, with credit-based rendering and watermark tiers.

    2. Credits (CMC). Credits are debited per use at posted rates. Rates vary by provider, quality tier, and video duration. Current rates are displayed in the Shop and at checkout. The Ledger records all credit transactions.

    3. Variable Pricing. Credit costs may fluctuate based on the costs of the underlying technology stack that powers the Service. These costs include, but are not limited to:

      • Video generation providers (Google Veo/Vertex AI, OpenAI)
      • Cloud storage and content delivery (Google Cloud Storage, CDN egress, storage classes)
      • Database and backend services (Supabase PostgreSQL)
      • Compute and hosting infrastructure (Vercel serverless functions, edge network)
      • Authentication and identity services (Clerk)
      • Payment processing fees
      • AI/ML inference and prompt processing costs
      • Market demand and operational conditions

      We will display current pricing in the Shop prior to purchase. Price changes take effect on new purchases only; existing Credit balances retain their value. We reserve the right to adjust credit rates as underlying infrastructure costs change.

    4. Pay-on-Delivery Guarantee. Credits are debited only upon successful delivery of the requested output (e.g., a completed video render). If a render or generation fails due to a system error, provider outage, or any cause not attributable to you, no credits are consumed. This guarantee is enforced programmatically — your credit balance is not affected by failed operations.

    5. Moderation. We enforce Provider safety rules and may block, watermark, blur, remove, or refuse content; rate-limit requests; or suspend accounts to comply with Provider policies and applicable law.

  5. Provider Terms (Your Upstream Obligations)

    1. You must comply with applicable Provider terms and usage policies when your projects invoke those services:
      • OpenAI (Terms of Use effective January 1, 2026; Privacy Policy updated June 27, 2025): You may not use outputs to develop competing models, represent AI output as human-generated, circumvent safety measures, or violate their Usage Policies. OpenAI assigns output ownership to you where permitted by law, but outputs may not be unique across users.
      • Google Veo/Vertex AI (Google Cloud Terms of Service last modified October 13, 2025; Cloud Privacy Notice effective December 18, 2025): You must comply with Google's Acceptable Use Policy, Prohibited Use Policy for generative AI, and responsible AI guidelines. Google retains no rights to your Customer Data beyond providing the Service. Automated safety tools may log prompts if abuse is detected.
    2. We surface Provider notices in-product and may require separate acknowledgments. You are responsible for reviewing Provider terms at their respective sites.

  6. AI-Generated Content; Intellectual Property; Disclosure

    1. Your content. You own your inputs and your outputs, subject to law, third-party rights, and applicable Provider terms. Per OpenAI's Terms of Use, OpenAI assigns to you all right, title, and interest in outputs (where permitted by law). Per Google Cloud Terms of Service, you retain all Intellectual Property Rights in your Customer Data.
    2. License to CineMake. You grant CineMake a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable license to host, store, process, transmit, display, and analyze your inputs/outputs solely to provide, secure, moderate, support, and improve the Service.
    3. Platform IP. CineMake retains all rights in the Service, software, models we own, documentation, UI, and trademarks. No implied licenses.
    4. AI Output Accuracy. Per both OpenAI and Google's responsible AI guidelines, AI-generated outputs may not always be accurate, may contain hallucinations, and should not be relied upon as a sole source of truth. You are responsible for reviewing outputs before use.
    5. AI-Generated Content Disclosure. All video, image, and text outputs produced through the Service are AI-generated. You acknowledge the following:
      • (a) These outputs are created by artificial intelligence systems (OpenAI GPT-4.1 for story/scene generation; Google Veo 3.1 for video generation).
      • (b) The Service labels AI-generated outputs with a visible "AI-Generated" badge and embeds invisible provenance metadata (Google SynthID). We are implementing C2PA Content Credentials for machine-readable provenance manifests per the developing EU AI Act Code of Practice on transparency.
      • (c) Under EU AI Act Article 50 (Regulation 2024/1689), providers and deployers of AI systems that generate synthetic content must ensure outputs are marked in a machine-readable format and detectable as artificially generated. CineMake complies by applying SynthID watermarks (via Google Veo), visible AI disclosure badges, and maintaining provenance audit trails.
      • (d) Under California SB 942 (AI Transparency Act, effective January 1, 2026), providers of generative AI must offer manifest disclosure (visible marking) and latent disclosure (invisible provenance metadata) for AI-generated image, video, and audio content. CineMake complies by providing visible "AI-Generated" badges and embedding SynthID provenance data.
      • (e) When sharing or publishing AI-generated outputs outside the Service, you are responsible for maintaining appropriate AI-generated content disclosures as required by applicable law, including but not limited to EU AI Act Article 50 and California SB 942.
    6. Prompt Versioning and Audit Trail. CineMake maintains a versioned record of the AI prompts used to generate outputs, including prompt version identifiers, content hashes, and model metadata. This audit trail supports transparency, quality assurance, and compliance with EU AI Act Article 12 (record-keeping) and Article 13 (transparency) requirements. Audit records are retained per our data retention schedule.

  7. Prohibited Uses

    1. You may not use the Service to: violate law; infringe IP or privacy/publicity rights; generate illegal or exploitative sexual content (including any content involving minors); engage in or incite violence, terrorism, or hate crimes; create malware or attempt to bypass safety systems; conduct doxxing, unlawful surveillance, or non-consensual intimate imagery (NCEI); or violate trade/export controls.
    2. These prohibitions align with and incorporate by reference:
      • OpenAI Usage Policies (prohibiting illegal activity, harmful content, privacy violations, high-risk activities without safeguards, and misrepresentation of AI outputs)
      • Google Cloud Acceptable Use Policy (prohibiting illegal activity, NCEI, intellectual property violations, spam, unauthorized access, and service disruption)
      • Google Prohibited Use Policy for generative AI
    3. Violation may result in content removal, account suspension, and reporting to relevant authorities.

  8. Billing; Credits; Merchant-of-Record; Taxes

    1. Merchant-of-Record. Our designated Payment Processor acts as Merchant-of-Record for checkout, taxes, and refunds. Receipts identify the Payment Processor as the seller of record. The Payment Processor handles payment processing, tax calculation, and compliance with local payment regulations.
    2. Per-Entity Billing. Billing relationships are maintained on a per-entity basis (User or Organization). Each entity maintains its own payment methods, subscriptions, invoices, and credit balances. Charges for one entity are never applied to another entity's payment method. There is no automatic cross-charging between Users and Organizations, or between different Organizations.
    3. Subscriptions. Subscriptions are billed on a monthly or annual basis. Subscriptions are non-refundable once activated or renewed. You may cancel anytime to stop future renewals. Subscription credits are granted monthly regardless of billing period — annual subscribers receive the same monthly credit allocation as the equivalent monthly plan, dispensed once per month for twelve months. Annual billing provides a price discount only; it does not change the credit dispensing schedule. Subscription credits follow FIFO (first-in, first-out) consumption rules.
    4. Subscription Plan Changes. You may change your subscription plan at any time through the CineMake billing settings page.
      • (a) Definitions. An "Upgrade" is a change to a plan with a higher credit allocation (higher tier). A "Downgrade" is a change to a plan with a lower credit allocation (lower tier). A "Sidegrade" is a change between plans at the same tier (same credit allocation) — for example, switching between two plans at the same rank or switching billing intervals without changing tier. These classifications determine whether the change takes effect immediately or at the end of your current billing period.
      • (b) Immediate changes. The following plan changes take effect immediately: upgrades (from any plan), monthly-to-monthly downgrades, monthly-to-annual interval switches, and sidegrades between plans on the same billing interval. When an immediate change occurs: (i) your current billing cycle ends and a new billing cycle begins; (ii) you are charged the new plan rate for the new billing period; (iii) your new plan's full monthly credit allocation is dispensed; and (iv) for changes from monthly plans, no refund or credit is issued for any unused time remaining on your previous monthly billing period. For upgrades from annual plans, proration applies as described in subsection (d).
      • (c) Deferred changes. The following plan changes are deferred and take effect at the end of your current annual billing period: all downgrades from annual plans (whether to a lower-tier annual plan or to any monthly plan) and annual-to-monthly interval switches at the same tier. You retain full access to your current plan — including continued monthly credit dispensements — until the annual term ends, at which point the new plan activates automatically. You may modify or cancel a pending deferred change at any time before it takes effect; the most recent selection will be applied at renewal.
      • (d) Proration (upgrades from annual plans only). Upgrades from an annual plan — whether to a higher-tier annual plan or a higher-tier monthly plan — take effect immediately with proration. The unused portion of your current annual term is credited toward the new plan price via our payment processor's proration calculation. Your billing cycle resets and your new plan's full monthly credit allocation is dispensed. You will not lose the financial value of your remaining annual commitment. Proration applies only to upgrades from annual plans. No other plan change type involves proration.
      • (e) No partial refunds on immediate monthly changes. By initiating an immediate plan change from a monthly plan, you acknowledge that the remaining unused time on your previous billing period is forfeited. This is clearly disclosed in the plan change confirmation screen before you confirm the change.
    5. Subscription Cancellation (FTC Negative Option Compliance). You may cancel your subscription at any time through the CineMake billing settings page or through the subscription management link in your receipt email. Cancellation requires no more steps than the original sign-up process. Upon cancellation: (a) your subscription continues through the end of the current paid period; (b) no further renewals are charged; (c) any unused subscription credits remain available through the end of your paid period. We do not impose cancellation fees, require phone calls, or add unnecessary steps to the cancellation process.
    6. Credit Packs — Break-the-Seal Refund Rights. Credit packs are one-time purchases governed by a two-stage "break the seal" system per the 2026 Digital Fairness Regulations. When you purchase a credit pack, it is created in an "Unopened" state — the credits are not yet available in your spendable balance and the pack is fully refundable within 14 days. To use the credits, you must explicitly choose to "Open" the pack, which dispenses the credits into your spendable balance and permanently waives your refund right for that pack. If you do not open a pack within 14 days of purchase, it is automatically dispensed (opened) and the credits are added to your balance. See our Refund Policy for full details.
    7. Express Consent for Digital Content. When you choose to "Open" a credit pack, you expressly consent to the immediate performance of the digital content contract and acknowledge that you thereby lose your right of withdrawal for that pack (per EU Directive 2011/83/EU, Article 16(m)). This consent is recorded in the Ledger with a timestamp and your user identifier.
    8. FIFO Consumption. Credits are consumed oldest-first across all your opened packs and subscription grants. Only credits from opened packs and active subscription grants are available for consumption.
    9. Taxes. Taxes are calculated, collected, and remitted by our Payment Processor where required. The Payment Processor handles VAT, sales tax, and other applicable taxes automatically based on your location.
    10. No Credit Expiration. Purchased credits do not expire. Subscription credits granted monthly follow your subscription lifecycle.

  9. Privacy; Audit; Security

    1. Your use is governed by our Privacy Policy. We maintain audit evidence using Supabase PostgreSQL with append-only audit tables, and store generated assets in Google Cloud Storage with lifecycle policies and retention controls.
    2. AI-Specific Data Collection. We collect and process the following AI-related data in connection with providing and improving the Service: (a) prompts and inputs you provide to the Story Agent; (b) AI model responses and generation metadata; (c) prompt version identifiers and content hashes; (d) token usage statistics and generation timing; (e) model identifiers and fallback/continuation metadata; (f) optional feedback you provide on AI-generated outputs (ratings, tags, comments). See our Privacy Policy for details on purposes, retention, and your rights.

  10. Organizational Ownership, Bi-Directional Transfer, and Control

    1. Organizational Entities. CineMake supports Organizations — shared workspaces where multiple users collaborate under a common entity. Organizations are created and owned by a single User (the "Organization Owner").
    2. User-to-Organization Transfer (Ownership Handoff). When you create content (Collections, Projects, Characters, Brand Assets, Environments, or other creative works) within an Organization, or transfer existing personal content into an Organization, you are transferring ownership and full control of a copy of that content to the Organization. The Organization Owner and designated team administrators ("team_admins") will have complete administrative rights over organizational content, including editing, deletion, sharing, publishing, credit pool management, and commercial use. The original personal content remains in your personal library and is unaffected by the transfer.
    3. Organization-to-User Transfer (Reverse Handoff). Organization Owners may transfer organizational content (Collections, Projects, Characters, Brand Assets, Environments) to their personal accounts. A copy of the organizational content is created in the recipient's personal library; the organizational copy remains unchanged. Non-owner members may also receive copies from an Organization if the Organization Owner or team_admin has enabled the "Transfer to Personal / Other Orgs" permission for that member's role. Organization-to-User transfers are presented with a recommendation against transfer for non-owners and require explicit consent.
    4. Organization-to-Organization Transfer. Users who have access to multiple Organizations may transfer content between them, subject to the outbound transfer permission being enabled on the source Organization. A copy of the content is created in the destination Organization; the source Organization's content remains unchanged. Both the source and destination Organizations must grant the user appropriate access.
    5. Disconnected Copies. All transfers between Users and Organizations, and between Organizations, create disconnected copies with provenance tracking. The copy is owned by the receiving entity and is fully independent of the source. Changes to the copy do not affect the original, and changes to the original do not affect the copy. Provenance metadata (the identity of the source entity) is retained for auditability but does not create any ongoing link, dependency, or synchronization obligation.
    6. Authorship Credit. You retain authorship credit for content you create, regardless of ownership or subsequent transfers. The original creator is permanently recorded in the system audit trail. However, authorship credit does not confer ownership or administrative control over transferred content.
    7. Consent. Before transferring content to an Organization for the first time, you will be asked to provide explicit, informed consent acknowledging the transfer of ownership and control. This consent is recorded in the Ledger and is required once per Organization. Organization-to-User and Organization-to-Organization transfers also require explicit confirmation.
    8. Transfer Audit Trail. All transfers are recorded in an immutable audit trail that captures the source entity, destination entity, transferring user, element type, and timestamp. This trail is retained per the data retention schedule in Section 11.
    9. Deletion and Dependencies. If you wish to delete a personal Character or Brand Asset that has been copied into organizational projects, you must first remove all organizational copies from their respective projects. CineMake enforces these dependency checks to prevent data integrity issues.
    10. Organization Roles. Organizations support role-based access control:
      • team_admin: Full administrative access including content management, member management, credit pool management, and destructive operations (delete, lock, transfer).
      • team_member: Collaborative access including content creation, editing, and rendering within organizational projects, subject to permissions granted by team_admins.
    11. Outbound Transfer Permissions. The Organization Owner and team_admins control whether non-owner members may transfer organizational content outbound (to personal accounts or other Organizations) via the "Transfer to Personal / Other Orgs" permission setting. This setting defaults to disabled for non-owners.
    12. Credit Pooling. Organizations may maintain a shared credit pool ("org_pool"). Credits in the org pool belong to the Organization entity, not to any individual member. Purchases made for the org pool are charged to the Organization's payment method. There is no automatic fallback to any individual member's personal payment method for org pool purchases. Renders and other metered operations performed within organizational projects consume credits from the org pool. Individual members may also use their personal credit balance when working within an Organization, subject to the Organization's policies.
    13. Organizational Billing. The Organization maintains its own billing relationship with CineMake, including its own payment methods, subscriptions, and invoices. The Organization Owner and authorized administrators with the can_manage_billing privilege are responsible for managing the Organization's billing settings. Subscriptions purchased for the Organization provide credits to the org pool. Individual members retain their personal billing relationships and credit balances entirely separate from the Organization's billing. Organization billing is never cross-charged to individual members, and individual billing is never cross-charged to the Organization.
    14. Org-Level Refunds. Refunds for org-level purchases (including credit packs purchased for the org pool) are processed to the Organization's payment method only. The same 14-day unopened cooling period and break-the-seal rules described in Section 8.5 apply to org-level credit pack purchases. Refunded credits are removed from the org pool balance. No refunds for org-level purchases are issued to any individual member's personal account or personal payment method. Only the Organization Owner or authorized administrators with the can_manage_billing privilege may request org-level refunds.

  11. Data Retention

    1. We retain personal data only as long as necessary for the purposes described in this section and our Privacy Policy. Retention periods are as follows:
      • Ledger/consent records and security logs: Retained for the life of your account plus 7 years after account closure for compliance, audit, and legal obligations.
      • Billing and transaction data: Retained for the life of your account plus 7 years after account closure (tax and financial reporting obligations).
      • Credit pack and usage data: Retained for the life of your account plus 3 years after account closure (billing reconciliation and dispute resolution).
      • Rendering metadata and outputs: Retained while your account is active. Upon account deletion, rendering outputs are deleted within 30 days; anonymized metadata may be retained for up to 1 year for service improvement.
      • AI audit records (LlmResponse, prompt versions, feedback): Retained for the life of your account plus 3 years after account closure for regulatory compliance (EU AI Act Art. 12, California SB 942) and service improvement. Anonymized aggregate data may be retained indefinitely.
      • Transfer audit records: Retained for the life of your account plus 7 years after account closure for provenance tracking, compliance, and legal obligations.
      • Account and identity data: Deleted within 30 days of account deletion request, except where retention is required by law.
      • Deleted (archived) items: When you delete a project, character, brand asset, or other entity within the Service, it is moved to your Archive and retained for 7 days. During this period you may restore the item. After 7 days the item and all associated data (including generated images stored in Google Cloud Storage) are permanently and irreversibly deleted. This policy applies uniformly across the application database and cloud storage.
    2. You may request deletion of your data at any time. See our Privacy Policy for details.

  12. AI Compliance

    1. EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689). CineMake operates as both a provider (of its Story Agent pipeline) and a deployer (of Google Veo and OpenAI models) under the EU AI Act. We comply with applicable transparency obligations under Article 50, record-keeping under Article 12, and transparency requirements under Article 13. Our AI Transparency Disclosure at /legal/ai-transparency provides detailed information about the AI systems used, training data policies, and content provenance.
    2. California AI Transparency Act (SB 942). CineMake provides manifest disclosure (visible "AI-Generated" badge) and latent disclosure (SynthID invisible provenance metadata) on AI-generated content as required by SB 942 effective January 1, 2026.
    3. Colorado AI Act (SB 24-205). CineMake does not deploy AI systems for "consequential decisions" as defined under the Colorado AI Act (employment, financial, housing, insurance, or education decisions). We maintain safety assessments and content moderation as a best practice.
    4. Post-Market Monitoring. We monitor AI system performance through user feedback collection (Story Agent ratings, render quality assessments), automated quality metrics, and prompt version tracking with evaluation data. Compliance status is reviewed in our internal admin dashboard.

  13. Suspension; Termination

    1. We may suspend or terminate your access for violations of these Terms, Provider rules, risk, or legal requests. You may cancel at any time (cancellation stops renewal; see Refund Policy).

  14. Disclaimers

    1. THE SERVICE AND AI OUTPUTS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." WE DO NOT WARRANT ACCURACY, ORIGINALITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR REVIEWING OUTPUTS AND OBTAINING ANY NECESSARY RIGHTS OR CLEARANCES.
    2. Per OpenAI's Terms of Use: "Output may not always be accurate. You should not rely on Output from our Services as a sole source of truth or factual information, or as a substitute for professional advice."
    3. Per Google's Responsible AI documentation: Generative AI models may produce outputs that are "plausible-sounding but factually incorrect, irrelevant, inappropriate, or nonsensical" (hallucinations). Models may lack domain expertise and have limitations with edge cases.

  15. Limitation of Liability

    1. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, CINEMAKE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES; OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS IN ANY 12-MONTH PERIOD WILL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO US FOR THE SERVICE IN THAT PERIOD.

  16. Indemnification

    1. You will defend and indemnify CineMake and its affiliates against claims arising from your content, your use of the Service, your breach of these Terms or Provider terms, or your violation of law.

  17. Governing Law; Venue

    1. These Terms are governed by the laws of Delaware, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules. Exclusive jurisdiction and venue lie in the state or federal courts in Delaware, except where consumer law requires otherwise.

  18. Contact

    1. support@cinemake.ai