Terms of Service

1. Provider

The Service is provided by CladeGrove · di Fabio Ariotti, sole proprietorship (impresa individuale) with registered office in Trino (VC), Italy.

• VAT no. (P.IVA): IT02782390021
• Tax code (Codice Fiscale): RTTFBA97T03B885G
• REA: VC-312122
• Certified email (PEC): FabioAriotti@Pec.It
• Customer support: support@cladegrove.com

2. Definitions

• Service: the CladeGrove web platform, accessible after registration, which enables the generation of synthetic AI images of fictitious personas via generative AI models.
• User: the natural person who accesses the Service.
• Content: text prompts, character descriptions, wardrobe item images, optional scene reference photos, generated synthetic outputs, outfit presets and any other material uploaded to or produced through the Service.
• Synthetic Output: an image generated by the Service that depicts a fictitious persona. Synthetic Outputs do not portray real, identifiable persons; they are produced from a textual persona specification synthesised by the AI model.
• Credits: units of consumption (1 credit = 1 generated output image). Credits are granted by an active subscription plan, by one-time top-up packs, or by the welcome grant on first sign-up.

3. Acceptance of the Terms

By registering you declare that you fully accept these Terms and the Privacy Policy. If you do not accept, you cannot use the Service.

4. User account

• Registration requires a valid email address and a password meeting the security requirements stated at account creation.
• You are responsible for safeguarding your credentials and for any activity carried out through your account.
• You may not share your account with third parties, create multiple accounts to bypass technical limits, or use someone else's credentials.

5. Acceptable use: "synthetic only" rules

CladeGrove is engineered to generate synthetic personas, not to clone or impersonate real human beings. The following uses are prohibited and any attempt will result in immediate account termination, forfeiture of unused Credits, and may be reported to competent authorities:

• Identity replication: using prompts, references or any other mechanism in an attempt to make a Synthetic Output resemble a specific identifiable real person (including yourself for impersonation purposes) without that person's express, informed and written consent. The Service does not provide a face-cloning workflow; it must not be used as a substitute for one.
• Impersonation of public figures, politicians, celebrities for the purpose of spreading disinformation, propaganda, fake endorsements, or any deceptive communication.
• Non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), including pornographic "deepfakes", sexualised content depicting any identifiable real person, or non-consensual sexual content in any form.
• Content depicting minors in any sexual, suggestive, or otherwise inappropriate context. The Service may not be used to generate or process imagery of minors.
• Unlawful content: defamatory, obscene, hateful, harassing, violent, terrorist or otherwise illegal content under EU or Italian law.
• Uploading photos of identifiable persons without consent: even though the Service does not extract biometric templates, you must obtain consent from any real person depicted in a scene reference photo before uploading it. By uploading you warrant that such consent has been obtained.
• Stripping, altering or forging provenance metadata embedded by the Service in Synthetic Outputs (see §7) in order to misrepresent AI-generated content as authentic photography. Removing or tampering with these markers is a violation of these Terms and may breach Art. 50 of the EU AI Act.
• Security and abuse: attempting to breach the security of the Service, performing reverse engineering, mass scraping, automated attacks, jailbreaks, prompt injection against the AI back-end, or uploading malware.
• Any other use that infringes third-party rights (image rights under Articles 96–97 of Italian Law 633/1941, copyright, trademark, privacy).

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate without notice any account that violates these rules, and to cooperate with law-enforcement authorities. Termination for violation does not entitle you to any refund of unused Credits, subscription fees or top-up packs.

6. Rights to content

You retain ownership of the Content you upload. You grant the Provider a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license, limited to the duration strictly necessary to deliver the Service, to store and process your Content through the technical infrastructure and AI providers listed in the Privacy Policy. We do not use your Content to train AI models, and our AI sub-processor (OpenAI) does not train its models on API inputs or outputs (per OpenAI's API data-usage policy).

As regards Synthetic Outputs generated for you through the Service, you receive a broad licence to use, reproduce, modify, distribute and commercially exploit them, subject to (a) your compliance with these Terms (in particular §5), (b) any third-party rights appearing in the Output (logos, trademarks, products, locations, copyrighted designs), and (c) the integrity of the embedded provenance metadata (see §7). Generated images are provided "as-is" and are not covered by any uniqueness warranty: AI models may produce similar outputs from similar inputs.

You are solely responsible for the use you make of the Synthetic Outputs, including compliance with applicable law in the jurisdictions where you publish or distribute them.

7. AI transparency and provenance metadata (EU AI Act, Art. 50)

The Service uses third-party generative AI models supplied by OpenAI, L.L.C., namely gpt-5.4-mini for textual extraction of persona attributes and gpt-image-2 for image synthesis. We do not warrant the accuracy, consistency or absence of artifacts in the Synthetic Outputs.

Synthetic Outputs are AI-generated synthetic media within the meaning of Article 50 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act). To support machine-readable identification of the synthetic nature of the output, before persistence each Synthetic Output is embedded with provenance metadata consisting of:

• EXIF IFD0 tags (Software, Artist, Copyright, ImageDescription) declaring AI-generated origin;
• an XMP packet carrying the IPTC controlled-vocabulary value Iptc4xmpExt:DigitalSourceType = http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/digitalsourcetype/trainedAlgorithmicMedia (the standard endorsed by the European Commission AI Office and IPTC for synthetic-media labelling), together with our custom GenAI: namespace recording provider (OpenAI gpt-image-2 via CladeGrove), generation ID, timestamp, link to these Terms and to the public AI Disclosure page.

We are committed to upgrading provenance to a cryptographically signed C2PA Content Credentials manifest before the date of applicability of Art. 50 (2 August 2026).

Deployer obligation (Art. 50(4) AI Act): when you publish, share or otherwise distribute Synthetic Outputs to third parties (in particular where the Output could be perceived as an authentic photograph of a real person, situation or event), you are responsible, as deployer, for labelling the content as artificially generated or manipulated in a clear and distinguishable manner. You are also responsible for compliance with the GDPR and the image rights provided for in Articles 96 and 97 of Italian Law 633/1941. The provenance metadata embedded by us assists, but does not replace, that user-side disclosure obligation. You acknowledge that some third-party platforms strip EXIF/XMP on upload. Where this is the case, you must add a visible disclosure (caption, watermark, on-image label).

8. Plans, credits and billing

The Service is offered through monthly subscription plans (Starter, Pro, Studio) and one-time top-up packs, billed by Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd. Subscription plans grant a monthly credit allowance that resets each billing period and does not roll over. Top-up credits are valid 12 months from purchase, are FIFO-consumed by expiry, and require an active subscription to be purchased. New users receive a one-time welcome grant of 5 free Credits at sign-up, valid 12 months and FIFO-consumed alongside top-ups.

Prices include all applicable taxes where indicated. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period unless cancelled before renewal through the customer portal.

9. Right of withdrawal and refunds

Where you qualify as a consumer under Articles 45 et seq. of Italian Legislative Decree 206/2005 ("Codice del Consumo"), you would normally be entitled to a 14-day right of withdrawal on distance contracts.

The Service supplies digital content not provided on a tangible medium: credits, generations and access to the platform are made available immediately upon purchase. By completing the checkout you (i) expressly request immediate execution of the contract before the 14-day withdrawal period expires, and (ii) acknowledge that you will lose your right of withdrawal as soon as performance has begun (i.e. as soon as credits are credited to your account or you start using the Service). This is in line with Article 59, paragraph 1, letter m) of Italian Legislative Decree 206/2005 and Article 16 letter m) of Directive 2011/83/EU.

Consequently:

• Subscription fees are non-refundable, including any unused portion of the current billing period. Cancelling a subscription stops future renewals; the plan stays active until the end of the period already paid.
• Top-up packs are non-refundable once purchased, including any unused credits, and credits expire 12 months after purchase.
• Goodwill exception: at our sole discretion, we may issue a refund or credit-back in case of demonstrable Service malfunctions attributable to us (prolonged downtime, systematically corrupted outputs caused by our infrastructure). Requests must be sent to support@cladegrove.com within 14 days of the issue.

Nothing in these Terms limits any non-derogable consumer rights granted by mandatory provisions of the law applicable to you.

10. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Provider against any claim, demand, liability, damage, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from (a) your breach of these Terms, in particular §5 (Acceptable Use); (b) the use, publication or distribution of Synthetic Outputs in violation of third-party rights (image rights, copyright, trademark, privacy, data-protection law); (c) your tampering with the provenance metadata embedded in Synthetic Outputs.

11. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by law, the Provider shall not be liable for indirect or consequential damages, loss of profits or data arising out of the use of, or inability to use, the Service. Liability for willful misconduct or gross negligence remains unaffected, as do non-derogable rights granted to consumers by mandatory law.

12. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service at any time by deleting your account from the settings panel or by writing to support@cladegrove.com. The Provider may suspend or terminate the relationship in case of violation of these Terms.

13. Changes

We may update these Terms for technical, regulatory or product reasons. Material changes will be notified by email or in-app at least 14 days before they take effect.

14. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by Italian law. For any dispute, the exclusive jurisdiction lies with the Court of Vercelli (Italy), save for the mandatory consumer venue (Article 33, paragraph 2, letter u) of Italian Legislative Decree 206/2005), where the consumer's court of residence or domicile prevails. Consumers resident in the European Union may also use the European Commission's ODR platform (ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr).