Legal

Terms of Service

These Terms govern your use of Parenthesis. Please read them: they are an agreement between you and us.

Effective 22 July 2026 · Last updated 22 July 2026

Who you are agreeing with

Parenthesis is operated from California, in the United States. When these Terms say we, us or Parenthesis, that is who they mean. You can reach us at hello@arjunlohan.com.

By creating an account, tapping Get started, or otherwise using Parenthesis, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use Parenthesis.

Eligibility

You must be at least 13 to use Parenthesis, or the minimum age of digital consent in your country if that is higher. Parenthesis is built for secondary-school and university-age students and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly maintain accounts for them, and we delete any account we learn belongs to a child under 13, together with the information in it.

If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use Parenthesis only with the involvement of a parent or guardian who agrees to these Terms on your behalf.

What Parenthesis is

Parenthesis is an AI. You are not talking to a person.

The companion is a computer program that generates text and speech. It is not a human being, it does not know you, and it cannot feel anything about you or your work, however it sounds when it replies.

It is a study companion, built to help you work something out rather than hand you an answer. Because it runs on AI operated by other companies, what you write has to be sent to them to be answered. We ask your permission before that happens, and again, separately, before voice is turned on. What is sent, and to whom, is set out in our Privacy Policy.

It can be wrong

Parenthesis can get things wrong, and it can be confidently wrong: a correct answer and a mistaken one sound the same. Check its working before you rely on it, and particularly before you submit anything that is being assessed. Parenthesis does not provide medical, legal, financial or mental-health advice, and nothing it says should be treated as professional advice of any kind.

If you are having a hard time

Parenthesis is not a crisis service.

It is not a therapist, a counsellor or a doctor. It cannot diagnose or treat anything, and it is not a substitute for talking to a real person. If you are struggling with your mental health, please tell someone you trust: a parent, a teacher, a school counsellor, or a doctor.

If you are in immediate danger or thinking about harming yourself, contact emergency services. In the United States you can call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line), any time, for free.

Messages you send pass through an automated check for indications of self-harm, abuse or violence, described in our Privacy Policy. That check is automated: it is not monitored in real time and it does not alert anyone. Do not use Parenthesis to tell someone that you need help.

Academic work

Parenthesis is built to help you work something out, not to produce an answer for you to copy.

Your school, college or university decides what counts as acceptable assistance on your work. Those rules are theirs, and complying with them is your responsibility. If you are unsure whether using an AI companion is permitted on a particular assignment, ask before you use it.

Studying with other people

You can invite someone to study with you and you can join a friends group for the daily questions. Both are optional, and both mean another person sees some of what you do. Our Privacy Policy sets out exactly what they see.

When you are in a session or a group with someone else:

Be decent to them. No harassment, no bullying, no threats.
Nothing sexual, nothing violent, nothing hateful.
Do not share personal contact details, yours or anyone else’s, in a shared session.
Do not use someone else’s session to get answers handed to you, or to hand them answers.
Only invite people you actually know.

Invitations work by link or code and can be used by whoever holds them, so send one only to the person you intend. You can stop sharing a subject with a group, and leave a group, at any time.

If someone behaves badly

Every person you are linked with carries a report and a block control in the app. Report tells us what happened, and a real person reads it. Block does not wait for us: it ends the link immediately, cancels anything scheduled between you, and stops them linking to you again. They are not told that you blocked them.

You can also email hello@arjunlohan.com. We can end a link, remove someone from a group, or close an account over it.

Your account

You can start using Parenthesis as a guest, without signing in. A guest account is a real account on our servers and what you do in it is saved. If you later sign in, the activity from the guest period becomes part of that account.

Keep your sign-in to yourself, and keep your device secure. Anyone with access to your device or your Apple ID can reach everything in your account, and we cannot tell you apart. Tell us promptly if you believe someone else has used your account.

You can stop using Parenthesis at any time, and you can delete your account from inside the app: on the web it is in the menu behind your name, and on the iPhone it is at the bottom of the profile sheet. Deletion takes effect immediately and cannot be undone. What it removes is set out in our Privacy Policy. If you would rather we did it for you, email hello@arjunlohan.com.

Your content

Your messages, uploads, notes and work remain yours. We do not claim ownership of them.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce and process your content, and to transmit it to the providers named in our Privacy Policy, solely to operate and provide Parenthesis to you. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies retained as described in that policy. We do not sell your content, publish it, or use it to advertise.

You are responsible for what you upload. Do not upload material you have no right to share, and remember that uploading a document containing someone else’s personal information sends that information onward.

Acceptable use

Do not break the law with Parenthesis, or use it to harm someone.
Do not attempt to access other people’s accounts, our systems, or data you are not entitled to.
Do not scrape it, resell it, or use it as the engine behind another product or service.
Do not deliberately push the companion into producing content that harms someone, or into impersonating a real person or a professional it is not.
Do not upload malware or anything designed to disrupt the service for other people.

We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms. Where the reason is neither serious nor urgent we will tell you first, and you can reply to hello@arjunlohan.com if you think we have it wrong.

Changes to the service and to these Terms

We may add, change, suspend or discontinue features, or the service as a whole, at any time. Parenthesis is provided without any guarantee of availability, so please do not rely on it being reachable at a particular moment.

If we discontinue Parenthesis entirely, we will give notice at the email address on your account, where we hold one, and a reasonable period to request a copy of your content.

Changes to these Terms

When we change these Terms we update the date at the top of this page. For changes that materially affect what you are agreeing to, we will give notice in the app or by email before they take effect. Continuing to use Parenthesis after a change means you accept the revised Terms.

Disclaimers and liability

Parenthesis is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty that the service will be accurate, uninterrupted or error-free.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of data, results, grades, opportunities or profits, however caused. Our total liability for all claims relating to Parenthesis is limited to the greater of the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim and one hundred US dollars.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that the law does not permit us to limit or exclude. If you live somewhere that gives you rights that cannot be waived, you keep them.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in California.

If you are a consumer elsewhere and your local law gives you the right to bring a claim where you live, or entitles you to the protection of mandatory provisions of that law, this clause does not take those rights away.

General

If any part of these Terms is held unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. A delay in enforcing a term is not a waiver of it. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between us regarding Parenthesis. You may not transfer your account; we may transfer these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, and will notify you if we do.

Contact

For anything at all, including a complaint, a problem with another user, or a request to delete your account, email hello@arjunlohan.com. See also our Privacy Policy.