Terms and Conditions of Service

Alluvial | Last updated: 10 October 2026

1. About these Terms

These Terms are a binding agreement between you and Aptitude Solutions Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17476747), whose registered office is at 167 - 169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London, England, W1W 5PF ("we", "us", "our"). We operate the Alluvial service. Email: enquiries@alluvial.ac.

By creating an account or using our website, application, dashboard, API, browser extension, integrations, free tools or any other service that links to these Terms (the "Services"), you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Services.

If you use the Services on behalf of an organisation (a company, school, university, public body or other entity), you confirm that you have authority to bind it, and "you" refers to both you and that organisation.

These Terms incorporate our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, any order form, and any product documentation or supplemental terms we make applicable to a Service. If there is a conflict, the following order of precedence applies unless agreed otherwise in writing: (1) a signed enterprise agreement or order form; (2) our Data Processing Agreement; (3) product-specific terms; (4) these Terms; (5) FAQs, help content and marketing material.

2. Definitions

Account means any account, workspace or API credential used to access the Services.

Administrator means a user a Customer has authorised to manage its Account, users, settings, billing and data.

Screening Output means any score, flag, highlight, percentage, confidence indicator or other result produced by screening content for low-quality or low-effort indicators.

Content means all Input, Output and other material submitted to or generated through the Services, including scan history.

Customer means any person or organisation that registers for or uses the Services.

Input means text, files, URLs or other material you submit to the Services.

Output means scan results, reports, scores, Screening Outputs, API responses and any other result the Services generate.

Consumer means an individual acting wholly or mainly outside their trade, business, craft or profession.

3. The Services

We provide tools that screen text for low-quality and low-effort indicators, together with related reporting, scan history, team, API and integration features. Alluvial is not an AI detector: it does not determine whether content was written, assisted or generated by AI, or who wrote it.

The Services are decision-support tools. They are not a substitute for professional judgement, editorial review, legal advice, academic or disciplinary process, or human evaluation.

3.1 Screening is probabilistic. Screening Outputs are statistical indicators, not findings of fact. Many of the indicators we screen for are commonly associated with AI-generated text, but they also appear in human writing and may be absent from AI-generated text. Screening Outputs will produce false positives and false negatives and can be affected by language, genre, short text, translation, editing, mixed authorship and changes to our models. No Screening Output is proof of who wrote content, whether AI was used, or whether a person made insufficient effort, and you must not present it as such.

3.2 Other features. Any other analysis, writing or reporting feature may be incomplete, inaccurate or out of date. You are responsible for reviewing all Output before relying on, publishing or sharing it.

3.3 APIs and integrations. APIs, plugins, extensions and integrations are subject to our documentation, rate limits, authentication requirements and any additional terms. You are responsible for configuring them correctly and for complying with any third-party platform rules.

4. Eligibility and Accounts

You must be at least 18 and able to form a binding contract to use the Services. Where an organisation (such as a school) provides access to anyone under 18, that organisation is responsible for ensuring appropriate authorisation, notices and safeguards are in place.

You must provide accurate and current information when registering and keep it up to date. You are responsible for keeping your credentials and API keys secure and for all activity under your Account. Tell us promptly at enquiries@alluvial.ac if you suspect unauthorised access.

Administrators may be able to view, export, restrict or delete Content, users, settings and billing associated with a workspace. The Customer is responsible for its Administrators' actions.

5. Fees, Subscriptions and Credits

5.1 Pricing. Some Services are free. Paid Services are charged at the prices shown at purchase or in your order form. Unless stated otherwise, prices exclude VAT and other taxes, which you must pay in addition. By purchasing, you authorise us and our payment processor to charge your payment method for all fees, renewals, overages and taxes due.

5.2 Renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically for the same billing period until cancelled. You can cancel at any time through your Account or by contacting us; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period and does not entitle you to a refund of fees already paid, except as set out below. We will give you at least 30 days' notice of any price increase to an existing subscription, and you may cancel before it takes effect.

5.3 Credits and usage. Credits, scan allowances and usage limits are non-transferable and may expire as stated at purchase. Overage or top-up charges apply if you exceed your plan limits.

5.4 Trials and promotions. We may offer trials or promotional pricing and may change or withdraw them at any time. Where a trial converts to a paid subscription, we will tell you before you sign up.

5.5 Late payment. If you are a business and do not pay an undisputed amount when due, we may charge interest under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 and suspend your access until payment is made.

5.6 Refunds. If you are a Consumer, you have the right to cancel a paid purchase within 14 days of buying it under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. By starting to use the Services during that period you ask us to begin immediately; if you then cancel, you must pay for the Services used up to that point, and you lose the right to cancel once the Services have been fully provided. Your other statutory rights, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, are not affected.

If you are not a Consumer, fees are non-refundable once paid, and consumed Services (completed scans, API calls and used credits) cannot be cancelled or refunded, unless an order form says otherwise.

6. Your Responsibilities

You confirm that:

(a) you have all rights, consents and permissions needed to submit your Input and to grant the licence in section 9;

(b) your use of the Services will comply with applicable law and with any contract, institutional policy or third-party right that applies to you;

(c) the information you give us is accurate and complete;

(d) you will not submit confidential, regulated, special category or children's personal data unless you have a lawful basis and authority to do so and the Service is appropriate for that data; and

(e) you will apply meaningful human review and fair process before taking any action that materially affects a person.

7. Acceptable Use

You must not, and must not allow anyone else to:

(a) use the Services unlawfully, or in a way that is harmful, abusive, deceptive, defamatory, harassing, infringing or discriminatory;

(b) submit Content you do not have the right to submit, or upload malware or anything that disrupts or damages the Services;

(c) circumvent rate limits, credits, access controls, security measures or other technical restrictions;

(d) share, resell, sublicense or transfer your Account, API key or access, except as permitted by an enterprise agreement or API plan;

(e) reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to extract source code, models, weights, algorithms or other non-public components of the Services, except to the extent the law or an open-source licence expressly permits;

(f) scrape, crawl or automatically extract data, scores or Output other than through our documented API and within its limits;

(g) use the Services or Output to build, train, test, benchmark or improve a competing product, including any content-screening tool, AI detector, paraphrasing tool, "humaniser" or machine-learning model, without our prior written consent;

(h) publish benchmark or performance-test results about the Services, or carry out vulnerability testing, without our prior written consent;

(i) remove proprietary notices, use our trade marks without permission or imply that we endorse you; or

(j) breach export control, sanctions, anti-bribery, data protection or other applicable laws.

8. Human Review and Decisions About People

Output is an indicator requiring review, not evidence of misconduct. You must not use any Output as the sole basis for a decision that has legal or similarly significant effects on a person, including decisions on education, employment, discipline, payment, contracts or reputation. In particular, you must not accuse, penalise, dismiss, fail or otherwise disadvantage a student, employee, contractor, writer or applicant solely because of a Screening Output.

Where you make such decisions, you are responsible for complying with your obligations under data protection and equality law, including those on automated decision-making, for considering context and other evidence, and for giving the person a genuine opportunity to respond or appeal.

Schools, colleges and universities should communicate their AI-use policies to students and apply them consistently.

9. Content and Intellectual Property

9.1 Your Content. You keep ownership of your Input. Submitting it does not transfer ownership to us.

9.2 Licence to us. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, copy, process, analyse and use your Content as necessary to provide, secure, support and maintain the Services, prevent abuse, comply with law and enforce these Terms.

9.3 Service improvement. We may use scan history, Output, metadata and feedback to test, secure, maintain and improve the Services, including our screening models. We do not use the text of your Input (the manuscripts or other content you submit for analysis) to train artificial intelligence or machine-learning models. We do not sell your Content. Enterprise and education customers may agree different data-use terms in their order form or data processing agreement, which will take precedence.

9.4 Output. As between you and us, and to the extent we have any rights in Output generated specifically for you, we assign those rights to you. This does not extend to our Services, models, algorithms, know-how or interfaces. Output may not be unique, and other users may receive similar or identical Output.

9.5 Our rights. The Services, including our software, APIs, models, scoring systems, documentation, databases, branding and related intellectual property, belong to us or our licensors. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the Services for your internal lawful purposes during your subscription or access period.

9.6 Feedback. If you give us ideas or suggestions, you grant us a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use them without restriction or obligation to you.

9.7 Infringement. If you believe Content on the Services infringes your rights, contact enquiries@alluvial.ac with details of the material, your rights and your contact information. We may remove or disable access to Content where appropriate.

10. Data Protection and Security

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data as a controller, including account, billing and usage data. Both parties will comply with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Where you submit Content containing personal data of other people (such as students or employees), you are the controller (or, if you act for someone else, a processor), and we process that data as your processor on your documented instructions. Our Data Processing Agreement applies to that processing and forms part of these Terms. You must have a lawful basis for submitting personal data and must give any required notices to the people concerned.

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data and Customer content, but no system is completely secure. You are responsible for configuring your Account securely, managing user access and protecting your credentials.

If we exchange non-public business, technical or security information under an enterprise arrangement, each party will protect the other's confidential information with reasonable care and use it only to perform the agreement, except as required by law.

11. Third-Party Services and Open Source

The Services may integrate with or link to third-party platforms, payment processors, learning management systems and other services, which are governed by their own terms and privacy practices. We are not responsible for them.

The Services may include open-source or other third-party software. That software is licensed under its own terms, which prevail over these Terms to the extent they grant you rights that these Terms would otherwise restrict. Nothing in these Terms limits any right granted to you under an open-source licence that cannot lawfully be restricted. Notices and licence information are available in the Alluvial repository.

12. Changes, Availability and Beta Features

We may update, suspend or withdraw features, models, scoring methods, data sources, limits or plans. Where a change materially reduces the Services you have paid for, we will give reasonable notice and, if you are a paying customer, you may cancel and receive a pro-rata refund of prepaid fees for the unused period.

We may offer beta or experimental features, which are provided as they are and may be unstable, inaccurate or changed without notice.

We do not guarantee that the Services will be uninterrupted or error-free. Interruptions may occur through maintenance, security issues, third-party failure or events beyond our control.

13. Suspension and Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access, disable API keys or remove Content if we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms, created security risk or legal exposure for us, failed to pay amounts due, or misused the Services. Where reasonably practicable, we will tell you why and give you an opportunity to put things right first.

You may stop using the Services at any time. On termination, your right to use the Services ends. Temporary source uploads are removed within 24 hours. Screening records and derived results are retained for up to seven years from creation, unless an earlier deletion request applies; they are then deleted, subject to legal obligations. See the Privacy Policy and DPA for the retention schedule and Organisation-level deletion process.

Termination does not affect rights and obligations that have already accrued. Sections that by their nature should survive will do so, including those on payment, intellectual property, disclaimers, liability, indemnity and governing law.

14. Disclaimers

Except as set out in these Terms, and to the extent permitted by law, the Services and Output are provided "as is" and "as available". We do not warrant that the Services or Output will be accurate, complete, uninterrupted or suitable for your purposes, or that all low-quality, low-effort, AI-generated, plagiarised or other problematic content will be identified. All warranties, conditions and terms implied by law are excluded to the fullest extent permitted.

You are responsible for evaluating Output, applying human review and deciding whether the Services suit your use case.

If you are a Consumer, nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights, including that digital content and services must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described.

15. Limitation of Liability

15.1 What is not limited. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

15.2 Consumers. If you are a Consumer, we are responsible for foreseeable loss and damage caused by our breach or negligence. We are not liable for loss that was not foreseeable, or for any business, trade or professional loss.

15.3 Businesses. If you are not a Consumer, then to the extent permitted by law:

(a) we are not liable for loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, anticipated savings or data, business interruption, or any indirect or consequential loss, whether arising in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise; and

(b) our total liability arising out of or in connection with the Services and these Terms will not exceed the greater of (i) the fees you paid us for the relevant Service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, and (ii) £100.

15.4 Reliance on Output. Without limiting the above, we are not liable for any academic, employment, disciplinary, reputational or commercial consequence arising from your reliance on Output in breach of section 8.

16. Indemnity

If you are not a Consumer, you will indemnify us against all losses, liabilities, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from third-party claims relating to: (a) your Content, including any claim that it infringes rights or that you lacked authority to submit it; (b) your breach of these Terms or applicable law; or (c) your use of Output to make decisions about a person in breach of section 8. We will notify you promptly of any claim, allow you to control its defence and give reasonable assistance at your cost.

17. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or the Services (including non-contractual disputes), are governed by the law of England and Wales.

If you are not a Consumer, the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a Consumer, you may bring proceedings in the courts of the part of the UK where you live, and we may do the same.

Before starting proceedings, each party will try in good faith to resolve the dispute informally by contacting the other (our contact is enquiries@alluvial.ac), except where urgent injunctive relief is needed.

18. General

Changes to these Terms. We may update these Terms. We will update the date above and, for material changes, give you at least 30 days' notice by email or in-product notice. If you continue to use the Services after the changes take effect you accept them; if you do not agree, you must stop using the Services and may cancel your subscription.

Electronic communications. You agree that we may communicate with you electronically, including by email, in-product notice or by posting on our website, and you must keep your contact details current.

Sanctions and export. You must comply with UK and other applicable export control and sanctions laws and must not use the Services if you are subject to sanctions or located in a jurisdiction where our Services cannot lawfully be provided.

Events beyond our control. We are not liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

Entire agreement. These Terms and the documents they incorporate are the entire agreement between us on their subject matter and replace all earlier understandings. Each party acknowledges that it has not relied on any statement not set out in them, but this does not limit liability for fraud.

Severance and waiver. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. A failure or delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver of it.

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our written consent. We may assign or subcontract our rights and obligations, including on a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.

Third-party rights. Except as stated in these Terms, no one other than you and us has any right to enforce them under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

Interpretation. Headings are for convenience only. "Including" means "including without limitation".

19. Contact

Aptitude Solutions Ltd 167 - 169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London, England, W1W 5PF Company number: 17476747 Email: enquiries@alluvial.ac