Terms of service

Who these terms cover

ClarifyWhy is an independently operated product based in the United Kingdom, currently offered as a free beta. “ClarifyWhy”, “we”, and “us” refer to the individual operating the service under that name. Contact us at hello@clarifywhy.com.

These terms apply to visitors, waitlist subscribers, research participants, and study creators. Creators use the workspace for business or professional research. If you act for an organisation, you must have authority to agree on its behalf. You must be at least 18 to create an account, join the waitlist, or participate.

Review these terms before using the service. If you disagree, do not begin a study or interview. The Privacy policy explains data handling; accepting these terms does not give consent to optional analytics, marketing emails, or advertising.

The service and its limits

ClarifyWhy helps creators design studies and run adaptive interviews by voice or text. It uses artificial intelligence (AI), which can mishear, misunderstand, omit information, repeat itself, or produce inaccurate or inappropriate material. Review AI output before relying on it or sharing it.

ClarifyWhy does not provide medical, legal, financial, employment, or other professional advice. It is unsuitable for emergencies or decisions that materially affect a person’s rights or opportunities. Research results do not guarantee demand, representativeness, business success, or any particular outcome.

The current beta is free and subject to available capacity and usage limits. Beta access, usage allowances, and displayed credits have no cash value and do not guarantee future access. Any future paid service would require separately disclosed pricing and terms; using this free beta does not authorise a charge.

Taking part in research

Participation is voluntary. You can decline a question, stop the interview, and decline optional follow-up contact or experience feedback. The study creator receives the research response and any follow-up details you expressly choose to share for the stated purpose.

The creator is responsible for the study invitation, its research purpose, and any promised incentive. ClarifyWhy is responsible for an incentive only when we expressly offer it ourselves. Participation does not create employment or promise a product, reward, or future opportunity.

You can delete your response through the private management control while this browser’s interview access remains valid. After that, contact us for help. Deletion from ClarifyWhy does not automatically remove copies a creator has already downloaded; the creator remains responsible for those copies and applicable rights requests.

Creator responsibilities

As a creator, you determine your research purpose and how you use the results. You must:

• Provide lawful, accurate study instructions, recruitment materials, and participant notices, including your identity and contact details.
• Establish a lawful basis and obtain any required permissions for the information you collect, including other people’s information.
• Recruit adults, honour stated incentives, and handle follow-up contact only for the purpose the participant agreed to.
• Review AI suggestions and results, respect withdrawal and other privacy rights, and set an appropriate retention period for research and exports.
• Protect your account, study links, and downloaded data, and tell us promptly if you suspect unauthorised access.

You cannot sell participant data or use research content, participant identifiers, or study follow-up contacts for advertising audiences through ClarifyWhy. You must not present an AI interview as a conversation with a human. Our creator data-processing schedule applies where we process research on your behalf.

Acceptable use

Use ClarifyWhy lawfully and respect other people’s rights. Do not:

• Submit unlawful, fraudulent, threatening, abusive, or infringing material, impersonate someone, or disclose information you have no right to share.
• Collect passwords, authentication secrets, payment-card details, government identifiers, or confidential employer or third-party material.
• Design studies to collect sensitive personal data, including health, ethnicity, religion, political opinions, sex life, biometric identification, or criminal-offence information.
• Use the service for unlawful profiling, surveillance, discrimination, or decisions about employment, credit, healthcare, housing, or similar matters based solely on AI output.
• Bypass limits or access controls, introduce malware, scrape private data, or disrupt the service. Restrictions on reverse engineering apply only where the law permits them.

We may remove or restrict access to content when reasonably needed to address a breach, security risk, or legal obligation. We do not undertake to review every study or response.

Your content and our materials

You retain the rights you have in your study materials, answers, and feedback. You grant us a non-exclusive licence to host, copy, transmit, transcribe, and process them to deliver the requested service, show results to the authorised creator, troubleshoot, secure the service, and comply with law. We may use the providers described in the Privacy policy for those purposes.

This licence does not permit the sale of research content, advertising use of research, or training of general-purpose AI models. It ends when the relevant content is deleted, except for copies lawfully retained for a limited purpose, such as legal obligations or restricted backups. Optional feedback to ClarifyWhy can help improve the product.

Our software, branding, interface, and original website materials belong to us or our licensors. These terms give you access to use the service; they do not transfer ownership or grant a right to resell our software. Your study materials remain yours.

Availability and external services

The beta is provided as available. We do not promise uninterrupted access, compatibility with every device, complete or accurate AI output, data recovery in every circumstance, or continued availability of a feature. Creators should keep any permitted exports they need, subject to their own privacy obligations.

Hosting, AI, authentication, connectivity, and email providers support the service. External websites have their own terms. A provider failure may interrupt ClarifyWhy, but this does not remove our own legal responsibilities, including responsibilities for processors handling data for us.

We may change or retire beta features and apply reasonable usage limits. Where reasonably possible, we will give advance notice of a material reduction or closure and a reasonable opportunity to export data. Urgent security or legal action may require immediate changes. No beta disclaimer removes mandatory consumer protections.

Liability and business claims

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, statutory data-protection claims, or anything the law does not allow us to exclude or limit. Your mandatory consumer rights also remain intact.

If you are a consumer or participant

We remain responsible for reasonably foreseeable loss caused by our breach of contract or failure to use reasonable care and skill, where the law provides that responsibility. The business exclusions, cap, and indemnity below do not apply to consumers or people acting only as research participants.

If you use the free beta for business

Subject to the exceptions above, our total aggregate liability to you for ordinary contractual claims arising from your use of the free beta is limited to £100. For business users, we also exclude lost profit, revenue, business opportunity, anticipated savings, and goodwill, and indirect or consequential loss, to the extent the exclusion is lawful and reasonable. These provisions do not limit statutory data-protection compensation or regulatory powers.

A business creator must reimburse us for reasonable, evidenced costs and damages resulting from a third-party claim caused by that creator’s unlawful content, lack of required permission, or prohibited use of the service. This obligation applies only to the extent caused by the creator; it excludes our own breach, negligence, or other wrongdoing.

We will give prompt notice of such a claim and reasonable opportunity to assist with its defence. We will take reasonable steps to reduce loss and will not agree a settlement binding the creator without their consent, which must not be unreasonably withheld. This clause does not require payment merely because a complaint is made.

Ending access and changes to these terms

You may stop using ClarifyWhy at any time. Creators can close or delete studies and contact us about account deletion. We may suspend or end access for a serious or repeated breach, a security threat, a legal requirement, or retirement of the beta.

Where appropriate, we will explain the reason and allow a reasonable opportunity to resolve the problem. We may act immediately where delay would risk harm or breach the law. Suspension does not remove privacy rights; contact us if you need help accessing, exporting, or deleting your data.

Changes to these terms apply prospectively. We will publish the revised date and give prominent notice of material changes before they take effect where reasonably possible. Where agreement is required, we will seek it. A policy update cannot create consent to a new advertising purpose.

Provisions concerning ownership, permitted retention, accrued obligations, liability, and disputes continue as necessary after access ends. If a provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue where they can lawfully operate independently.

Governing law and getting help

The law of England and Wales governs these terms. Business users agree to the courts of England and Wales, except where mandatory law requires otherwise. Consumers keep the protections and court access granted by the mandatory law of where they live, including applicable rights in the UK, European Economic Area, and United States.

Please contact hello@clarifywhy.com if something goes wrong. You do not have to contact us first to exercise a legal right, bring a lawful claim, or complain to a regulator. These terms do not impose arbitration or shorten statutory claim periods.

Creator data-processing schedule

This schedule forms part of the creator terms wherever ClarifyWhy acts as a processor under applicable UK or EU data-protection law. The creator is the controller of their research and determines its purpose, participants, and lawful basis. If the creator is itself a processor, it must have its controller’s authority to appoint us.

Scope and instructions

We process adult participants’ answers, live audio, transcripts, interview metadata, and any authorised follow-up details to conduct, store, display, and export the creator’s research. Processing lasts while we provide those services and until return or deletion. Sensitive-data studies are prohibited. Separate ClarifyWhy account, security, waitlist, and experience-feedback processing follows the Privacy policy.

The creator’s study configuration, use of service controls, and written requests are documented instructions. We will follow lawful instructions, including for transfers, unless applicable law requires otherwise. We will notify the creator of that requirement unless the law prohibits notice, and inform them if an instruction appears to infringe data-protection law.

Confidentiality and security

We will restrict access to authorised people subject to confidentiality duties and maintain measures appropriate to the risk. These include access controls, encrypted connections, encryption of stored follow-up contact fields, and protection of account and interview credentials. We will assess and maintain these measures; no system is guaranteed invulnerable.

Service providers and transfers

The creator generally authorises the research providers identified in the Privacy policy. We will put equivalent data-protection obligations in place with subprocessors and remain responsible for their performance of those obligations. We will notify creators before adding or replacing a research subprocessor and allow a reasonable opportunity to object on data-protection grounds. If we cannot resolve an objection, the creator may stop the affected service and request return or deletion of its data.

We will make restricted international transfers only with the safeguards applicable law requires. This schedule does not itself replace a required international transfer agreement.

Assistance, incidents, and verification

Taking account of the processing and information available to us, we will assist with participant rights, security obligations, impact assessments, and required regulator consultation. We will notify the creator without undue delay after becoming aware of a personal-data breach affecting their research and provide available information and updates to support their response.

We will provide information needed to demonstrate compliance and allow and contribute to appropriate audits or inspections by the creator or their appointed auditor. Reasonable arrangements may protect other customers’ data and service security, but cannot prevent a legally required audit or urgent regulatory access.

Return and deletion

At the creator’s choice, we will return or delete research personal data when the service ends, and delete remaining copies unless applicable law requires retention. Backups awaiting deletion must be kept beyond ordinary use and removed through the applicable deletion cycle. The creator remains responsible for copies exported to its own systems.

This schedule takes priority over conflicting general terms for processor obligations. It does not restrict participants’ statutory rights.