Terms of service.
Lectavi is a desktop application that listens to what you are listening to, explains the last thirty seconds when you ask, and, when you choose to record, transcribes the recording and turns it into notes and flashcards. These are the terms of using it. By installing or using Lectavi you agree to them.
1. Who can use it
You must be at least 13 years old, and at least 16 if you are in a part of the European Economic Area where 16 is the minimum age for consenting to data processing. If you are under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian must agree to these terms on your behalf.
2. Recording, and your responsibility for it
This is the most important section of this document. A session that only listens keeps no audio, only the last two minutes in memory, and keeps in History only what Lectavi explained and the words it was explained from; recording a whole session is a switch you turn on yourself, and everything below is about that switch. From version 0.66, unless you turn off Transcribe sessions as they run, in Settings, under Privacy, a session that only listens also streams what it hears to a transcription service while it runs, as the privacy policy describes, so where you may not send what is said around you to such a service, turn that switch off.
- You are solely responsible for having the right to record. Lectavi records whatever you point it at. It cannot know who is in the room, what the law is where you are, or what your institution allows.
- Many places require everyone’s consent. A number of jurisdictions require the consent of all parties to a recorded conversation. Recording without it can be a criminal offence, not merely a policy breach.
- Most institutions require the instructor’s permission separately, whether or not the law does. Some grant it automatically as a disability accommodation, and many do not grant it at all.
- You agree to obtain permission before recording, and to stop when asked. Lectavi asks you to confirm this the first time you turn Record this session on, and cannot verify it.
- Do not redistribute a recording of somebody else’s teaching. A lecture is usually the lecturer’s or the institution’s intellectual property. Recording it for your own study is a different thing from publishing it or passing it around.
3. Academic integrity
Lectavi is built to help you understand and study material you attended. It is not built to complete assessed work for you, and using it to do so may breach your institution’s rules regardless of what these terms say. Our position is set out in full on the academic integrity page, and you agree to use Lectavi consistently with it and with the rules of your institution.
4. Your account
You can use Lectavi without an account. Signing in is what turns on sync and paid plans. An account is for one person: keep your sign in to yourself, and tell us if you think somebody else has used it. We may suspend an account that is used to break these terms or to attack the services Lectavi depends on, and we will say why.
5. Plans, payment and refunds
- Free. Three recordings in total, with everything the app does, 4 hours of listening a month, transcribed and explained, and up to 3,000 characters of spoken replies a month. A recording that failed does not count against it, and a session that only listens is never counted.
- Paid plans remove the limit on recordings, and include 20 hours of listening a month, transcribed and explained, and up to 20,000 characters of spoken replies a month. That is the same on Pro billed monthly or yearly and on Lifetime, for those who bought it. Pro is billed through Stripe, monthly or yearly. Lifetime was a single payment and is no longer sold, and nothing changes for anybody who holds it. The price is the one Stripe Checkout shows you before you pay. Prices and these monthly allowances can change, and a change is announced before it applies to you.
- The monthly allowance. Hours are counted by calendar month, in UTC, and come back on the first of the next month. A recording that starts with any of the month left is never cut off. One made after the month’s hours are used is still recorded and kept on your computer without a transcript; the app does not yet offer a way to have it transcribed later. Account in Settings shows how much of the month is left. The stretch Explain that asks about in a session, the last thirty seconds or the last two minutes, and a question you ask Lectavi out loud, are transcribed too, and count toward the same hours. From version 0.66, while Transcribe sessions as they run is on, every second of a session’s audio streamed to be transcribed counts instead, and a press of Explain that then counts nothing more, except while that stream is still connecting, or connecting again after a drop: a press then sends and counts its stretch as before, and the stream does not send or count those seconds again. Spoken replies, the walk through of a drawing included, are counted by the same month, in characters of the text spoken, and once they are used, replies are shown in words, without speech, until the next month begins. From version 0.64, looking a question up on the web is paid from the same monthly allowance as notes and answers, and stops before it would use what notes need.
- Cancelling. Cancel a subscription at any time from Account in Settings. You keep what you paid for until the end of the period, and nothing is charged after that.
- Refunds. If Lectavi does not work for you, write to support@lectavi.com within 14 days of your first payment and we will refund it. Where your local law gives you a longer or wider right of withdrawal, that right applies.
- Your notes are yours either way. A plan ending does not take anything away from you: every recording, drawing, note and card stays on your computer, and Settings can write your notes, cards and drawings out as files at any time.
6. What Lectavi produces, and what it does not promise
- Transcription is imperfect. Speech recognition makes mistakes, particularly with technical vocabulary, accents and poor room audio.
- Generated explanations, notes and cards can be wrong. A drawing, the lines Lectavi speaks over it, and the notes are produced by a language model from what was said. Lectavi cites the moment in the recording that each claim came from precisely so you can check it, and you should. A line Lectavi wrote carries no time, and is never shown as the speaker’s words.
- Nothing here is academic advice. A quiz Lectavi gives you is practice, not a prediction of your exam.
- A recording can fail. A muted microphone, a wrong input device or a lost connection can produce a silent or partial recording. The app tells you when it can detect this, and it cannot always. Check the first minute of a recording you cannot repeat.
- Talking to Lectavi pauses what it hears. While Lectavi speaks a reply, the room is not heard, and a recording holds silence for those seconds, so its voice is never recorded as the speaker’s. While you ask it something, the same is true of the room’s microphone. Turn spoken replies off in Settings to keep every second of a recording.
- Spoken answers and pointing can be wrong. A reply, or a mark Lectavi draws on your screen, is its own reading, made by a language model, and never the speaker’s words. Check a reply against the recording before you rely on it.
- A checked answer can still be wrong. From version 0.64, Lectavi checks its answers with a second model before you see them. A check lowers the chance of a mistake and cannot remove it, so the moment or the page each line came from is still there for you to check.
- “Hey Lectavi” can mishear. The phrase is heard on your computer and it can be missed, or heard where it was not said, and a wake you did not mean opens the microphone for a question as a press of Talk does, as the privacy policy says. The switch is off until you turn it on.
- A click goes where the ring is. From version 0.65, before Lectavi clicks it checks words against lists and draws a ring, and before version 0.66 it showed you what it would open before it opened it. From version 0.66 it opens what you ask for without asking again, once its switch is on, and what opens is how you see what it opened; with “Hey Lectavi” on, someone near your computer who says it can have it open something too. Before version 0.67 it asked you twice before every click; from version 0.67, with Let Lectavi click for me on, it clicks what you ask for without asking again, after showing the ring and what it is about to click for a moment, and with “Hey Lectavi” on someone near your computer who says it can have it click too. A list can miss a button or a page that buys, sends or deletes, so look at the ring, press Esc if it is not what you meant, and look at what was opened.
7. Your content
Your recordings, transcripts, notes and conversations are yours. We claim no ownership of them. You grant us only the permission technically necessary to run the service for you: to process audio, text, the files you attach and, when you turn on Live visuals or Screen sight or allow a question to look, pictures of your screen through the providers listed on the subprocessors page, and to store synced data so it reaches your other devices. That permission ends when you delete the content or your account. From version 0.64, on Windows, turning on Let Lectavi use the mouse also lets Lectavi move your pointer and scroll the window under it, each time you ask, once you have said yes, and nothing more: it never types or clicks. From version 0.65, a separate switch, Let Lectavi click for me, lets it make one left click each time you ask, before version 0.67 after you said yes twice and from version 0.67 without asking again, the switch being your yes, at most ten times an hour, and it still never types. From version 0.65, Let Lectavi open apps, sites and folders (called Let Lectavi open sites and folders on a Mac, where it opens no app), another switch, lets it open an app, a folder or a site from its list, or the front page of a website whose address you say, each time you ask: before version 0.66 after you said yes, and from version 0.66 at once, the switch being your yes, at most twenty times an hour, with the apps installed on your computer on Windows added to its list.
The sources Lectavi links to, from version 0.64, are other people’s pages. Lectavi shows what each page said and the day it checked it, and checks that its words match the page; it does not vouch that the page is right, and a page can change after it was checked.
8. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- record anybody without the permission described in section 2;
- use Lectavi to complete assessed work in breach of your institution’s rules;
- resell, redistribute or republish other people’s teaching;
- share an account, or use somebody else’s;
- attempt to extract credentials from the application, or use it to attack, overload or misuse the services it depends on.
When Lectavi moves your pointer or scrolls, it does so at your request and on your behalf, so you stay responsible for what happens on your computer as if you had done it yourself, and you agree not to use it on a computer, an account or a program you are not allowed to use. From version 0.65 the same is true when it clicks or opens something for you.
9. Third party services and availability
Lectavi depends on third party services for transcription, for explanations and notes, for spoken replies, for accounts and for payment. Those can be slow, can fail, and can change their terms. A session, a recording and playback continue to work on your machine when they are unavailable, but Explain that, transcription, notes, spoken replies and sync do not. We do not promise uninterrupted service.
10. Updates
Lectavi checks for updates. On Windows it installs them when you quit or when you ask it to. On a Mac the beta says when one is out and, when you ask, opens its disk image for you to download, since it cannot install itself without an Apple Developer ID. It never installs an update, or starts downloading one, while you are recording. An update may change or remove features, and a change that matters is described in the app.
11. Liability
Lectavi is provided as it is. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for academic outcomes, for a recording that failed or was lost, for consequences of recording without permission, or for the accuracy of anything a model wrote or said. Our total liability for anything arising from your use of Lectavi is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, and nothing here takes away rights you have as a consumer under the law where you live.
12. Ending things
You can stop using Lectavi at any time by uninstalling it and, if you have an account, asking us to delete it. Your local data stays on your computer for you to keep or delete. We may end the service or your access to it for a serious or repeated breach of these terms, and if we withdraw the service entirely we will give notice and a way to export synced data first.
13. Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of the place where Lectavi’s operator is established, and any dispute is heard in the courts there. If you are a consumer, the mandatory protections of the law where you live still apply, and you may bring a claim in your own courts where that law allows it.
14. Changes
These terms may change. The date at the top changes with them, and a material change is announced in the application before it takes effect. Continuing to use Lectavi after that date is agreement to the new terms.