Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern access to and use of AI Governance in a Box (“the Service”), operated by Gradient Descent LLC (“Gradient Descent,” “we,” “us”). By creating an account, subscribing to a paid tier, or otherwise using the Service, you (“you,” “your organization”) agree to these Terms. If you are accepting these Terms on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization.

These Terms should be read together with our Privacy Policy and Data Usage Policy, which describe how we handle your information.

The Service is a self-service web application that helps organizations produce AI governance documentation — including AI use policies, acceptable-use standards, risk registers, impact assessments, training plans, incident logs, and compliance crosswalks to frameworks such as NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU AI Act. Available modules and features depend on your organization’s subscription tier (Free, Starter, Professional, or Agency), described on our Pricing page.

The Service uses a proprietary control library and a third-party AI model to tailor and phrase governance language to your organization’s context. See our Data Usage Policy for how this process works, and Section 6 below for important limitations on what generated output represents.

You must provide accurate information when creating an account and keep your login credentials secure. Access is managed through role-based permissions (Owner, Admin, Editor, Viewer) that your organization’s Owner and Admins control through the Admin Console. You are responsible for the accuracy of the information your organization enters, for maintaining appropriate roles for your personnel, and for any activity that occurs under your organization’s account.

You agree not to: use the Service to violate any law; attempt to access another organization’s data or bypass tenant isolation; reverse-engineer, scrape, or resell the Service or the control library without our written permission; upload malicious code; or use the Service to generate content that is unlawful, discriminatory, or intended to evade a legitimate regulatory obligation.

Paid tiers are billed through our billing platform (Clerk Billing, which settles payment through Stripe) on an annual or monthly basis, as selected at checkout. Fees are described at the time of purchase and are non-refundable except as required by law or as we may expressly agree in writing. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period unless cancelled beforehand through your organization’s billing settings, accessible from the Admin Console.

We may change our pricing prospectively; changes will not apply to a billing period you have already paid for. If a payment fails or a subscription lapses, we may downgrade your organization to the Free tier, which may restrict access to paid modules while your data is retained per our Data Usage Policy.

Nonprofit discount. We may offer discounted Starter and/or Professional annual pricing to verified nonprofit organizations. Until our billing platform supports promotional coupon codes, this discount is offered on an honor-system basis: by selecting a nonprofit-discounted plan, you represent that your organization is a bona fide nonprofit entity. We reserve the right to request documentation confirming nonprofit status at any time, including after enrollment — such as your organization’s federal Employer Identification Number (EIN), IRS tax-exemption determination letter, or state nonprofit registration. If we are unable to verify your organization’s nonprofit status, or later determine that your organization did not qualify for the discount, we may adjust your subscription to standard pricing and, where we determine the discount was obtained through a knowing misrepresentation, may pursue the remedies described in Section 11. [Counsel should confirm whether any billing adjustment in this scenario is prospective-only or may also apply retroactively.]

The free AI Governance Readiness Scorecard and other free tools are provided to help you evaluate your organization’s AI governance posture. Completing them does not create a paid subscription. If you request advisory or consulting help through an in-app “talk to an expert” call-to-action, a summary of your organization’s profile and identified gaps is shared with our team so we can follow up about a separate consulting engagement — governed by its own agreement, not these Terms.

The Service is a drafting and organizational tool, not a substitute for legal counsel or a compliance program. Every clause in a generated document is grounded in a control from our proprietary library and is required to cite that control, but the Service does not represent generated output as legal advice, and using it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Gradient Descent LLC or anyone else.

You are responsible for having a qualified person at your organization (and, where appropriate, outside counsel) review any generated document before adopting, publishing, or relying on it — the Service is designed to require this review step before a document can be marked approved or exported, and that requirement is a feature, not a formality.

You retain ownership of the information your organization enters into the Service (“your content”). You grant us a limited license to process your content solely to provide the Service to you — including retrieval, AI-assisted generation, storage, and support — as described in our Data Usage Policy. We do not use your content to train AI models, and we do not sell it.

The control library, underlying software, documentation, and the GOVERNBOX.ai name, the “AI Governance in a Box” tagline, and related branding are the property of Gradient Descent LLC and are licensed, not sold, to you for use through the Service during your subscription. You may not extract, republish, or redistribute the control library outside the Service.

Your organization’s data is logically isolated from every other organization’s data using per-tenant access controls enforced in application code and at the database level. A small number of authorized Gradient Descent staff may access your data on a cross-tenant basis strictly for support and platform-maintenance purposes; every such action is recorded in your organization’s own audit log.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT GENERATED DOCUMENTS SATISFY ANY PARTICULAR LEGAL OR REGULATORY REQUIREMENT, OR THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, GRADIENT DESCENT LLC WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM.

You may cancel your subscription at any time through your organization’s billing settings in the Admin Console; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. We may suspend or terminate access to the Service if you materially breach these Terms (including the acceptable-use restrictions in Section 3, or a knowing misrepresentation of nonprofit status under Section 4) and do not cure the breach after notice, or if required to do so by law. Upon termination, your data is handled as described in our Data Usage Policy’s retention and deletion provisions.

We may update the Service and these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes to these Terms, we will notify account Owners by email or an in-app notice before the changes take effect. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the United States and the state in which Gradient Descent LLC is organized, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles.

Gradient Descent LLC and this Service are operated entirely independently of any federal government role held by Gradient Descent’s founder. No federal government data, systems, or official-duty information is used in, or informs, this Service. Organizations using this Service are Gradient Descent’s commercial customers, governed solely by these Terms and your service agreement with Gradient Descent LLC.

Gradient Descent LLC
Email: info@gradientdescent.biz
Web: gradientdescent.biz

Questions about these Terms can be sent through our Contact page or by email with the subject line “Terms of Service Question.”