Cortex is operated by ArcSoft Pty Ltd ("Arc"), an Australian entity. The Australian Consumer Law and other mandatory law give rights that cannot be excluded, and nothing here excludes them. Read with the Privacy Notice (Privacy Notice) and the Runtime & SDK License (SDK & Local Runtime License).
These terms govern your use of Cortex during its research preview. The point of this document is not "we disclaim everything." It is to set honest, specific expectations about what the preview is and isn't.
Our covenant (the spirit of these terms)
Cortex is generous by design, not by accident — and these terms are a covenant, not a hostage contract:
- Your own work continuity is never gated, and we never use a licensing failure to break it.
- You bring your own model and key, so we do not meter or charge for your inference.
- Licensing is about use-rights, not lock-in: free for your own work; a license is needed only when Cortex is used to serve others or is embedded in a product.
- When authorization lapses, Cortex keeps your work running and discloses the authorization state, rather than silently breaking it — no remote kill-switch on your machine.
- We do not exclude rights the law says can't be excluded.
That is the spirit. The sections below are the specifics; where they read like legal language it is to be precise and fair, not to trap you.
1. This is a research preview
Cortex is offered as a free research preview. It is early-stage software provided so you can try it and give feedback. Preview access needs no account: each release ships a preview entitlement that Cortex verifies on your machine. Some capabilities may require a free Arc Account. A research preview is not a perpetual license and not a finished product.
2. The product may change, pause, or be discontinued
Features, behaviour, schema, limits, defaults, and the entitlement model may change during the preview, and the preview itself may be paused, materially limited, commercialised, or discontinued. We aim to give at least 30 days' notice before introducing paid plans or materially limiting preview access. Pinning an old build does not extend a lapsed preview entitlement (entitlement tokens are short-lived and verified locally).
3. No production-grade availability or correctness promise
The preview does not promise stability, availability, uptime, performance, backward compatibility, or correctness/completeness of its output. Cortex is an orientation/provenance tool: its compiled state is sourced historical evidence, not a guarantee of current truth — verify against current reality before relying on it. (What Cortex does commit to in code — read-only sources, gated/capped model calls, sourced provenance — is in Terms of Use §0–§2.)
4. Not for high-risk or regulated use
Cortex is not intended for high-risk use or as a system of record where an error could cause injury, legal/financial harm, or harm to health, safety, or rights. Do not use the preview for safety-critical, clinical, legal-of-record, financial-of-record, or similar high-stakes decision-making, and review before using it on regulated or confidential material. (Data handling and third-party model exposure are described in the Privacy Notice.)
5. Commercial service / embedded use requires authorization
The preview is for your own use — personal, research, academic, evaluation, and internal experimentation on your own machine. Using Cortex to provide functionality, a service, automation, agent capability, hosted access, or product capability to another person, team, customer, organization, or end user ("Service Use"), or embedding the Cortex runtime in another product, requires a separate commercial/embedded license from Arc (see Commercial & Embedded License Terms). The line is "serving others," not whether money changes hands.
6. Local personal use keeps a continuity floor
Reading and resuming your own compiled work-state — the continuity floor (orient / boot / review / resume, and bounded local compile) — is intended to remain free for one person on one machine and is not cut off even if the preview changes, your entitlement lapses, or the preview ends. A lapse may disable preview-only "lease" features and may require re-authentication, but it does not delete your local data or wall you out of your own work, and Arc does not operate a remote kill-switch on your local runtime.
7. Bring your own model — costs and third-party terms are yours
Cortex calls a language model under your subscription or API key (BYOK). You are responsible for the model costs you incur and for complying with your model provider's terms — Arc does not supply the model and does not bill you for model usage. Cortex protects against accidental spend with engineering (cost gate, hard cap, no override — Terms of Use §2), but the spend and the provider relationship are yours.
8. Feedback
Feedback you choose to give about the preview may be used by Arc to improve Cortex without obligation or compensation. (This does not give Arc any right to your conversation content or compiled state — see the Privacy Notice.)
9. Your non-excludable rights are unaffected
Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any right, guarantee, or remedy that applicable law does not allow to be excluded — in particular the consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law and any mandatory privacy, data-protection, or other consumer-protection law. Every limit, disclaimer, or "as is" statement in the Cortex terms is qualified by "to the maximum extent permitted by law."
Cortex Research Preview Terms, version 1.0.