Terms & Conditions

Storyteller is operated by AI Explorers, registration number 2025/460302/07, a company incorporated in the Republic of South Africa.

• Registered address: [registered street address]
• Email: support@thestoryteller.co.za
• Website: thestoryteller.co.za
• Directors: [director names]

These disclosures are made under section 43 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 (ECTA).

By creating an account or using Storyteller you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.

You must be 18 or older to hold an account. Storyteller makes books about children, but it is not a service for children to use themselves.

Keep your sign-in details to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account, and you should tell us promptly at support@thestoryteller.co.za if you think someone else has access to it.

One person, one account. Accounts may not be shared, sold or transferred.

Storyteller runs on credits. Making a new story, rewriting a page, generating an illustration and recording narration each cost credits:

New accounts receive 25 free credits. Further credits are bought in once-off bundles:

• Credit purchases are once-off. There is no subscription and nothing recurring is billed to you.
• Credits do not expire, and neither do the stories you make with them.
• Credits have no cash value, cannot be exchanged for money, and cannot be transferred between accounts.
• A credit is spent when the work is generated. If generation fails through a fault on our side, the credit is returned to your balance.

Payments are processed by Ozowby instant EFT from your own bank account. You enter your banking credentials on Ozow’s secure pages; we never see or store them.

All prices are in South African Rand and include VAT where applicable. Credits and orders are released once Ozow confirms the payment to us.

You can order a printed copy of any book you have made. Every printed book is manufactured individually to your order from your own story, characters and photographs.

• Delivery is charged once per order, no matter how many books it contains.
• We deliver within South Africa only.
• Printing and delivery usually take [X to Y] business days from confirmed payment. Timelines are estimates, not guarantees.
• You are responsible for the accuracy of the delivery address you give us. Re-delivery after a failed attempt caused by a wrong address may be charged again.
• Risk in the books passes to you on delivery to the address you gave, or to any person at that address.

Printed colours will differ somewhat from what you see on screen. This is normal in printing and is not a defect.

Your photographs and your stories remain yours. We claim no ownership of them.

You grant us a limited, non-exclusive licence to store, reproduce and process your material solely to provide the service to you — to generate the story, illustrations, narration and printed book you ask for, and to show them back to you. This licence ends when you delete the material or your account. We do not use your photographs or stories to advertise, and we do not license them to anyone else.

By uploading anything, you promise us that:

• you own it, or you have permission to use it;
• every identifiable person in a photograph has consented to its use here — and where that person is a child, that you are their parent or legal guardian, or have that guardian’s permission;
• it does not infringe anyone’s rights.

This matters more than anything else in these terms. Do not upload photographs of other people’s children.

You may not use Storyteller to create, request or publish:

• sexual content involving children, or any sexualised depiction of a minor, in any form;
• content that is violent, hateful, harassing, or that degrades a person or group;
• content depicting a real person in a false or damaging light;
• anything unlawful in South Africa.

You also may not:

• attempt to circumvent credit limits, security controls or access another account’s data;
• scrape, resell or bulk-extract material from the Library;
• use automated means to generate content at a scale the service is not intended for.

We may remove content and suspend or close accounts that breach this section. Material involving the sexual exploitation of children will be reported to the authorities.

Refunds are made to the bank account the payment came from, within 10 business days of approval.

Storyteller writes and illustrates with AI. That has consequences you should understand before you spend credits:

• Output varies. The same choices will not produce the same story twice, and we cannot promise a particular result.
• Likenesses are approximations. Illustrated characters are drawn in the style you choose and are inspired by your photographs — they are not portraits, and will not be exact.
• It can get things wrong. Review a story before you read it to a child, and before you order it in print. Once printed, we cannot correct a mistake you approved.
• Uniqueness is not guaranteed. AI systems can produce similar output for different users, and we cannot promise your story is unlike every other.

As between you and us, the story, illustrations and narration generated for you are yours to keep, print, read and share. The legal position on copyright in AI-generated works is unsettled in South Africa and elsewhere, and we make no promise that such material attracts copyright protection at all.

Publishing is optional and off by default. If you publish a book, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to display it — its text, illustrations, character first names and your display name — publicly on the Library, worldwide, for as long as it stays published.

You can unpublish at any time. We will remove it promptly, though we cannot recall copies others have already saved. We may decline to publish, or remove, any book that breaches section 8.

We work to keep Storyteller running, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. We may suspend it for maintenance, and we may change or withdraw features. If we discontinue the service altogether we will give you reasonable notice and a way to download your books first.

The service depends on third-party AI providers. If one of them changes, fails or withdraws, some features may change with it.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including under the Consumer Protection Act.

Subject to that, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, or loss of data, and our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the six months before the claim arose.

Storyteller is a keepsake, not a backup service. Keep your own copies of photographs that matter to you.

You may close your account at any time by asking us at support@thestoryteller.co.za, which deletes your content as described in the Privacy Policy. Closing your account does not refund unused credits except under section 9.3.

We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms. Where the breach is not serious, we will give you notice and a chance to put it right first.

We may update these terms. Material changes will be notified by email or on the site at least 14 days before they take effect. Continuing to use Storyteller after that means you accept them.

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the South African courts have jurisdiction.

Please raise any complaint with us first at support@thestoryteller.co.za — nearly everything is settled that way. You retain the right to refer a dispute to the National Consumer Commission or to a court.