MuseumLog Terms of Service

Effective date: July 21, 2026

Last updated: July 27, 2026

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and MuseumLog, operated by Alex Zhang (“MuseumLog,” “we,” “us”), governing your use of the MuseumLog mobile application and related services (the “App”). By creating an account, using scanning features (including anonymously), or otherwise using the App, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy (available in the App under Profile → Privacy & Data), which is incorporated by reference.

If you do not agree, do not use the App.

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to use the App. While MuseumLog is in its beta program, participation is limited to adults; there is no parental-consent pathway. By using the App you represent that you are 18 or older. If you are under 18, do not use the App.

If you participate in the beta program (TestFlight), the Beta Program Terms (/beta-terms) also apply and control over these Terms where they conflict.

2. Your account

  • You may use certain features through an anonymous account created automatically on your device, or by registering with email/password, Apple Sign In, or Google. Content created under an anonymous account belongs to that account identity.
  • You are responsible for your credentials and for all activity under your account. Notify us promptly of any unauthorized use.
  • You agree to provide accurate information and to keep it current.
  • We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms (see Section 11).

3. The service

MuseumLog lets you photograph artworks in museums and galleries, uses automated systems — including third-party artificial-intelligence services — to attempt to identify them, and lets you keep a personal log of artworks with notes, collections, favorites, maps, and generated educational content.

We may modify, add, or remove features at any time. AI-powered features are subject to daily fair-use limits per user and service-wide, and we may throttle, limit, or temporarily disable AI features at our discretion (including for cost or abuse-prevention reasons).

4. AI-generated content — important disclaimers

The App relies on machine-learning systems that are probabilistic and imperfect. You acknowledge and agree that:

  • Artwork identification may be wrong. The App may misidentify an artwork, artist, date, or museum, or fail to identify a work at all. Identifications are suggestions, not authoritative attributions.
  • Generated descriptions may contain errors. Art-history content in the App is generated by AI from retrieved public sources (such as Wikipedia and museum databases). While we design the system to ground content in sources, errors, omissions, and outdated information can occur.
  • Do not rely on the App for consequential decisions — including purchasing, appraising, authenticating, insuring, or academically citing artworks. The App is for personal, educational, and entertainment use.
  • We may correct, regenerate, or remove generated content at any time.

5. Your content

“Your Content” means photos you submit, notes, log entries, collections, and any other material you create in the App.

  • You own Your Content. These Terms do not transfer ownership to us.
  • License to us. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, process, transmit, display (to you, and — for feedback-board posts and community reviews you choose to publish — to other users of the App as described below), and create derivative works of Your Content solely as needed to operate, provide, secure, and improve the App — including transmitting your photos to the third-party AI and infrastructure providers identified in the Privacy Policy for recognition and processing. This license ends when Your Content is deleted, except for residual copies in backups for a limited period and content we must retain by law.
  • Your responsibilities. You represent that you have the necessary rights to submit Your Content, and that it does not violate law or third-party rights. In particular:
  • Museum photography rules are your responsibility. Many museums restrict photography of some or all works. You are solely responsible for complying with the photography policies of any venue and with applicable copyright law when photographing artworks (some exhibited works are still under copyright).
  • Do not submit photos of identifiable people without their consent, and do not submit unlawful, infringing, or abusive content.
  • Content visible to other users. Two parts of the App publish Your Content to other people:
  • the in-app community feedback board; and
  • community reviews, which you may choose to publish on an artwork page. Reviews you keep private, and your personal notes, are never shown to anyone else.

Both are visible to all signed-in users and are displayed without your name. Do not post personal data (yours or anyone else’s), or content that is unlawful, offensive, infringing, or spam. We may remove any post or review and may restrict posting for violations. You can report content or hide a contributor in the App; we review reports and remove violating content.

  • No tolerance for objectionable content or abusive behavior. There is no tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users anywhere in the App. Objectionable content includes content that is unlawful; hateful or that harasses, threatens, degrades, or targets a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or any other protected characteristic; sexually explicit material; content that encourages self-harm or violence; content that discloses another person’s private information; and spam or deceptive content.

This is about how you address other people, not about what art is about. MuseumLog is an app for discussing art, and art depicts nudity, violence, religion, sexuality, and death. Writing seriously about such a work is not objectionable content; using a review to abuse, threaten, or harass someone is.

We may remove content and suspend or terminate accounts that violate this section, at our discretion and without notice. We aim to review reports and act on violating content within 24 hours. To report content or a user, use the report control in the App or email museumlog.app@gmail.com.

6. Third-party content and services

The App displays content from third-party sources, including Wikipedia/Wikimedia (much of which is licensed under Creative Commons licenses), Wikidata, and museum open-data programs such as the Art Institute of Chicago. Such content belongs to its respective owners and licensors and may be subject to their license terms and attribution requirements. The App also depends on third-party services (authentication, hosting, AI providers, mapping and place data from Geoapify, OpenStreetMap, and Apple). We are not responsible for third-party services’ availability or content.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • use the App for any unlawful purpose or in violation of these Terms;
  • probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the App, bypass authentication or access controls, or access data belonging to other users;
  • circumvent rate limits, quotas, or abuse protections, including by creating multiple or automated accounts;
  • scrape, harvest, or bulk-extract data or generated content from the App, or use automated systems to access the App except through interfaces we provide;
  • use the App or its outputs to build or train a competing artwork-recognition dataset or service;
  • reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the App except where such restriction is prohibited by law;
  • interfere with or disrupt the App’s operation or impose unreasonable load on its infrastructure;
  • misrepresent AI-generated content from the App as authoritative or human-authored scholarship.

8. License to the App

We grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to install and use the App on devices you own or control, for personal non-commercial use, in accordance with these Terms and the applicable app-store rules. All rights not expressly granted are reserved. The App, its design, software, and content we or our licensors provide are protected by intellectual-property laws.

9. Fees

The App is currently free of charge. We may introduce paid features or subscriptions in the future; if we do, pricing and payment terms will be presented before you are charged, purchases will be processed by the applicable app store, and these Terms will be updated accordingly.

10. Feedback

If you send us feedback or suggestions, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use them without restriction or compensation.

11. Termination

  • By you: stop using the App and/or delete your account at any time (see the Privacy Policy for deletion).
  • By us: we may suspend or terminate your access at any time, with or without notice, if you violate these Terms, create risk or legal exposure for us, or if we discontinue the App. Where practicable, we will provide reasonable notice.
  • Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 4–7 licenses/disclaimers as applied to prior use, and 12–15) survive.

12. Disclaimers

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE APP IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, OR AVAILABILITY. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, WE MAKE NO WARRANTY THAT ARTWORK IDENTIFICATIONS OR GENERATED CONTENT WILL BE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, OR RELIABLE, OR THAT THE APP WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranty disclaimers; in that case the above applies to the fullest extent permitted.

13. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: (a) WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA LOSS, OR LOSS OF GOODWILL, ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO THE APP; AND (b) OUR AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE APP WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE OR FIFTY U.S. DOLLARS (US $50).

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law (for example, liability for gross negligence, willful misconduct, or, in some jurisdictions, death or personal injury caused by negligence).

14. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from claims, damages, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising from Your Content, your violation of these Terms, or your violation of law or third-party rights (including museum photography policies and copyright), except to the extent caused by our own breach of these Terms.

15. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising from these Terms or the App will be resolved in a court of competent jurisdiction located in California, except where mandatory law gives you the right to bring proceedings where you live. Nothing in this section deprives you of mandatory consumer protections of your country of residence, and if you are a consumer in the EU/EEA you may also bring proceedings in your member state.

16. Apple App Store terms

If you obtained the App through Apple’s App Store, the following applies: these Terms are between you and us, not Apple; Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support; in the event of the App’s failure to conform to a warranty, you may notify Apple for a refund of the purchase price (if any), and Apple has no other warranty obligation; Apple is not responsible for addressing claims relating to the App, including product liability, regulatory compliance, or IP claims; Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you; you represent you are not located in an embargoed country and are not on any U.S. government prohibited-parties list; and you must comply with applicable third-party terms (e.g., your carrier agreement).

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. For material changes we will provide notice in the App or by email before they take effect. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree to updated Terms, stop using the App and delete your account.

18. General

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the App. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remainder stays in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. “Including” means “including without limitation.”

19. Contact

MuseumLog (operated by Alex Zhang)

museumlog.app@gmail.com