These Terms govern your use of ActuallySpeak Kids (the "app"), operated by Matthew Fabling, a sole trader trading as “Smooth English”, 4 Earlsburn Road, Lenzie, Glasgow, East Dunbartonshire, Scotland, G66 5PF, United Kingdom ("we", "us"). “Smooth English” is a trading name of Matthew Fabling; it is not a registered company. Because the app is intended for children aged 4–9, it must be used with the involvement of a parent or guardian, who accepts these Terms on the child's behalf. If you do not agree, please do not use the app.
A parent or guardian sets up and supervises use. Grown-up settings and the parent area are placed behind a grown-up gate. You are responsible for supervising the child's use, including microphone and any optional leaderboard participation.
Creating an account is optional — the child can use the app without one. Any account must be created by an adult aged 18 or over who is the child's parent or guardian, using the grown-up's own email address. Sign-in is passwordless: we email a one-time link, so keep access to that inbox secure, as anyone who can open the link can access the account. You are responsible for activity under your account. You may sign out at any time, and you may ask us to delete the account and its data as described in the Privacy Policy. We may suspend or terminate an account that is misused or used in breach of these Terms.
We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the app for personal, non-commercial educational purposes. You may not copy, resell, reverse-engineer or misuse the app or its content except as permitted by law.
When using optional community features such as the leaderboard, do not submit real names of children, personal contact details, offensive, harmful or infringing content, or attempt to identify other users. We may remove nicknames or entries that break these rules or that appear to contain personal information.
What it is. Free Talk lets a child have a short, spoken or tapped conversation in English with one of the app's jungle characters, on a chosen topic. The characters are fictional. Their replies are produced by an artificial-intelligence language model — they are not real people, not teachers, and not friends the child has met. The app says so plainly to the child if asked, and the characters are instructed never to claim otherwise.
It is switched off until a grown-up switches it on. Before a child can use Free Talk, a grown-up must pass the grown-up gate and give consent on a screen that explains, in plain English, what is sent, what is not kept, and what the limits are. Consent can be withdrawn at any time in Grown-ups → Settings, which turns the feature off again immediately. By giving that consent you confirm you are the child's parent or guardian and that you accept these Terms on their behalf.
Supervision. Free Talk is designed for use with a grown-up nearby. You remain responsible for supervising your child's use of it. There is a daily limit on the number of conversations, which is there to keep sessions short and shared, not to be worked around.
Safety measures. The characters are given strict instructions — child-appropriate topics only, never ask for personal details, never ask a child to keep a secret from a grown-up, never suggest meeting or contact outside the app. Separately from those instructions, and independent of the model, the app runs its own checks in code on what the child sends and on what the character says back. Messages that look like a child disclosing harm, sharing personal details, or steering somewhere unsuitable are handled by fixed, pre-written responses rather than by the model, and the chat may end gently. We deliberately err on the side of stopping a conversation too often rather than too rarely.
Safety flags. If a conversation triggers the most serious of those checks, the app ends the chat, tells the child warmly to speak to a grown-up they trust, and shows a note in the grown-up area. Those notes are stored on your device only. The app is not a monitoring or reporting service. It does not contact schools, authorities or anyone else, it cannot assess whether a child is at risk, and a flag is not a finding of any kind — it is a prompt for you to have a quiet conversation with your child.
Not advice, not support. Free Talk is a language-practice toy. It must not be relied on for emotional support, medical, psychological, safety or any other advice, and it is not a substitute for a trusted adult or a professional. AI models can be wrong, and can produce inaccurate or unexpected replies despite the measures above.
Acceptable use. Do not use Free Talk to attempt to extract unsafe content, to bypass the safety measures, to submit personal or identifying information, or for anything other than a child's English practice. We may withdraw access to the feature where it is misused.
What happens to the words. What is sent to our AI providers, what is discarded, and what is never stored is set out in section 4 of the Privacy Policy. In short: audio is transcribed and discarded, conversations are not stored on our servers, and nothing is used to train AI models.
Always free. The whole first region — Parrot Treehouse, eight adventures — and the first four reading books are free, with no time limit and no account required. Your child can use that much of the app forever without anyone paying anything.
The plan. A plan unlocks the remaining eleven regions, all 23 reading books and Free Talk, for every child profile on the account and on every device you sign in on.
Who may buy. Only a parent or guardian aged 18 or over, using their own payment method. The purchase screen sits behind the grown-up gate, and a child is never shown a price, a prompt to buy, or any other encouragement to spend money. If a child has made a purchase without your permission, email us and we will refund it.
Payment handling. Payments are taken by Stripe. We never see or store your card, Alipay or WeChat details — see the Privacy Policy.
Statutory rights. Buying gives you immediate access to digital content, so the usual 14-day cancellation right for distance sales ends once access begins; asking to start straight away is a request to begin supply immediately. This does not affect your rights if the app is faulty or not as described. Nothing here limits any right you have under the law where you live.
Changes. We may add, change, suspend or discontinue features. If we change the price, the new price applies from your next renewal and never retroactively; we will tell you before it takes effect, and you can cancel. A price change can never affect twelve months you have already bought.
The app is an educational tool provided "as is" and "as available". Pronunciation feedback and content are for learning support and may not be perfect. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising from use of the app. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.
Our handling of information is described in our Privacy Policy.
We may update these Terms; we will update the "Last updated" date and, for significant changes, provide a clearer notice.
These Terms are governed by the law of Scotland, and disputes are subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of Scotland. If you are a consumer living elsewhere in the United Kingdom, you may also bring proceedings in the courts of the part of the UK where you live (England and Wales, or Northern Ireland), and you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer protections under the law of the place where you live. Nothing in these Terms takes away rights you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded by agreement. Questions? Email actuallyspeak.help@gmail.com.
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