Terms of Service
These are the rules for using VIA. They are short and written in plain English, because rules nobody reads are not rules.
You need to be 14 or older to create an account.
That is the whole rule. When you sign up you enter your date of birth, VIA works out your age, and if you are under 14 the account is refused there and then — before anything about you is saved.
The date of birth itself is not kept. It is used to check your age and then thrown away. The Privacy Policy explains that in full.
What VIA is
VIA is a study app. You put your own study material into it — text you paste, a web link, a video, a PDF you upload — and you can ask questions about that material. An AI model reads what you gave it and writes the answers. You can also record a lesson. Recording on its own sends nothing to the AI model — the audio stays in your storage. If you ask for a recording to be written out, that audio is sent to Google to be turned into text, and the text is stored as study material you can ask questions about like any other. Where that audio goes, and what Google may do with it, is set out in the Privacy Policy under "Recording a lesson". There is also a focus timer, flashcards and a timetable.
What VIA is not
The answers can be wrong. VIA is built on an AI model, and AI models confidently state things that are not true. Treat what VIA tells you the way you would treat an explanation from a classmate who has read the material: useful, worth thinking about, and worth checking before you rely on it.
In particular:
- Check anything you are going to hand in, be marked on, or repeat in an exam.
- VIA is not your teacher and does not replace one.
- VIA does not give medical, legal or financial advice, and you should not treat anything it says as though it does.
Your account
- Use an email address you actually control. When you sign up we ask for a link confirming that address to be emailed to it, and you need to open that link before you can sign in — so an address you cannot read is an account you cannot get into.
- Your account is yours. Do not share your password with anyone, and do not sign in to somebody else's account.
- Tell us at support@viastudy.app if you think somebody else has got into your account.
- You can stop using VIA whenever you like. To have your account and everything in it deleted, use Settings in the app, or email that same address and we will do it for you — the Privacy Policy explains exactly what gets removed.
The material you put in
Your study material stays yours. Putting it into VIA does not give us ownership of it.
What you do give us is permission to do the things VIA obviously has to do with it in order to work: store it, break it into pieces so it can be searched, and send the relevant parts to Google's AI model so that your question can be answered from your own material. That is all we use it for. We do not sell it, and we do not hand it to anyone not named in the Privacy Policy.
Three things to keep in mind when you decide what to put in:
- Only add material you are allowed to add — your own notes, or something you have the right to use.
- If you record a lesson, make sure your teacher and anyone nearby know you are recording. A microphone picks up whoever is in the room, not only the person who meant to be recorded, and some places and some countries have their own rules about it. The app says the same thing under the record button, every time.
- Do not put in things that are nobody's business but yours. Medical details, somebody else's personal information, passwords. VIA is a study tool and there is no reason for any of that to be in it.
Things you may not do
- Use VIA to break the law, or to harass, threaten or impersonate anybody.
- Upload material you have no right to.
- Try to break into the service, get at other people's accounts, or get round the limits on your own.
- Automate VIA to hammer it with requests — it is for a person studying, not a script.
- Point VIA at a web address to make our server reach somewhere it should not.
If you do these things we may suspend or close your account. Where it is something we could reasonably talk to you about first, we will.
The service can change
VIA is being built. Features will appear, change and sometimes disappear, and the service can go down. We do not promise it will always be available or that it will never lose anything, and you should not use it as the only copy of work that matters to you.
Some things are stored only on your phone — your flashcards, your timetable and your subject list. If you delete the app, those go with it, and we cannot get them back for you. The Privacy Policy sets out what else is kept there, and what happens to it if you delete your account.
Changes to these terms
If these rules change, this page changes and the date at the top changes with it. If a change is a significant one we will tell you in the app rather than expect you to notice.
Getting in touch
Anything at all — a question, a complaint, help with a deletion the app could not finish — support@viastudy.app.