Terms of Service

Edition of 6 September 2026

Edition of 6 September 2026. This edition applies to accounts created on or after that date. For accounts that existed before it, it takes effect fifteen days after we notify the account holder, as section 12 requires. The previous edition is kept at Terms of 18 July 2026.

These Terms are the agreement between you and explain.ink. By creating an account or using the service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

In these Terms, "explain.ink", "we", "us" and "our" refer to the operator of the explain.ink service, based in the United States. "You" refers to any person or organisation that uses the service.

1. What the service does

explain.ink turns a topic, a script, or an uploaded document into a hand-drawn explainer video: it writes a script, draws the scenes, records a narration, and assembles the finished video. The output is generated by AI.

2. Your account

You need an account to buy minutes and create videos. You are responsible for what happens under your account and for keeping your sign-in secure. Tell us at hello@explain.ink if you suspect unauthorised use. You must be at least 18, or the age of majority where you live, to buy.

3. Minutes, and how you pay

  • You buy minutes of video, in advance. A card is required to purchase. Payment is processed by our payment provider, LemonSqueezy, who acts as the merchant of record for your purchase; your card details are handled by them, not by us.
  • You are charged for the length of the video you successfully render. If a render fails, you are not charged for it.
  • Purchased minutes are yours. They do not expire if you stop buying. Each purchase lasts 12 months from its purchase date; after that, any unused balance from that purchase lapses. There is no subscription to cancel: you buy minutes when you want them, and buying a larger pack only makes the minute cheaper, never anything else.
  • Prices are shown at checkout and may change for future purchases; a change never affects minutes you have already bought.
  • Free minutes are a gift, not an entitlement. We may grant minutes at no charge, in any amount, to anyone we choose, and we may refuse, reduce, withdraw or stop granting them at any time and without notice. Nobody acquires a right to free minutes: they are not promised by registering an account, they are not part of anything you buy, they have no cash value and they are never refunded in money. Where they are granted on request, we may ask what you intend to make and may decide on that basis. The two clauses in section 5 below apply to every video rendered on free minutes.

4. Refunds

Because minutes are consumed to generate a unique video for you, purchases are generally non-refundable once minutes have been spent. If something went wrong with a render, contact us at hello@explain.ink and we will make it right. Payment disputes are handled through our payment provider. The full details are in our Refund Policy.

5. Your content, and who owns the output

  • You keep ownership of what you put in (your topic, script, or document).
  • You own the video we generate for you, and you get full commercial rights to it and to its parts (the drawings, the narration, the final file). You may use them for any lawful purpose, including commercially.
  • You are responsible for having the rights to whatever you submit, and for how you use the output. You must not submit material you are not allowed to use, or that is unlawful.
  • Videos rendered from free minutes carry a small explain.ink mark in the corner. Once you buy minutes, every video you render after that comes out without the mark; videos already rendered keep it, because it is encoded into the file. The mark does not affect your ownership or your commercial rights.
  • Videos you make on free minutes may be shown by us as examples of the product. When you render a video using free minutes, you grant explain.ink a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to show that video, and stills from it, on our website, in our galleries, and on our own social channels, to demonstrate what the service does. You keep ownership and your full commercial rights, exactly as above. We choose what to show and we show very little of it. Write to hello@explain.ink and we will take yours down, no reason needed. This applies only to videos rendered on free minutes, and only to those rendered on or after 6 September 2026: anything you made before that date, and everything you render on minutes you paid for, is never used this way.
  • We do not use your inputs or outputs to train AI models (see our Privacy Policy).

6. Acceptable use

Do not use explain.ink to create or distribute anything that is illegal, infringing, deceptive, hateful, or that impersonates a real person or organisation to mislead. Do not attempt to break, overload, scrape, or reverse-engineer the service, or resell access to it in a way these Terms do not allow. We may suspend or close accounts that do. For the full list of what you may and may not make, see our Acceptable Use Policy.

7. AI-generated output — read this

Videos are produced by AI and may contain mistakes, inaccuracies, or visual artefacts. The hand-drawn style can include stray marks, and generated text or narration can be wrong. Review every video before you rely on or publish it. explain.ink is a tool; the responsibility for what you do with its output is yours.

8. Availability

We work to keep the service running but do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may change, pause, or discontinue features. If we discontinue the service entirely, we will give reasonable notice and let you download your videos.

9. Warranties and liability

The service is provided "as is", without warranties of any kind to the extent the law allows. To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability to you for any claim relating to the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the three months before the claim. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses.

10. Termination

You may close your account at any time by contacting us at hello@explain.ink. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these Terms. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (ownership, liability, governing law) continue to apply.

11. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, United States of America, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts located in Illinois have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, unless mandatory local law gives you other rights.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. For material changes we will notify account holders by email at least 15 days before they take effect. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept the change.

13. Earlier editions

Each edition of these Terms stays readable at its own address after it is replaced, so you can always check what applied when. Terms of 18 July 2026.

14. Contact

Questions about these Terms: hello@explain.ink.