What Hearsay is
Hearsay is a desktop application. It reads published podcast transcripts, writes commentary about a moment you select, and renders that commentary as a short vertical video — synthetic narration, burned-in captions, generated cover artwork, and a short excerpt of the source audio used as evidence for the point. It can then write a caption for each platform and publish the finished video to social accounts you have connected.
These terms are the agreement between you and Hearsay (“we”, “us”) covering that software and the service behind it. By using Hearsay you accept them. If you do not, do not use it.
The subscription
Hearsay costs $15 per month. The subscription renews monthly until you cancel. Cancelling stops future charges and does not refund the period already paid for, except where the law where you live requires otherwise.
The $15 pays for the software. It does not pay for generating anything — that is billed separately and directly to you by the providers whose keys you supply. See section 3.
Your API keys and provider costs
Hearsay requires you to supply your own API keys for the third-party services it uses: Google Gemini for the writing and the artwork, and ElevenLabs for the voice. Those providers bill you directly, under their own terms, on their own prices. We do not resell their capacity, mark it up, or take a share of it.
Generation has cost in the region of sixteen cents per video. That is an observation, not a commitment: the providers set their prices and can change them, and what you actually spend depends on your own use.
You are responsible for the charges incurred on your keys, for keeping those keys valid, and for keeping them secret. If a key is revoked, expires, or runs into a limit set by the provider, Hearsay will not be able to generate until you fix it. Your use of those services is also subject to their terms, and you must comply with them.
Your content and your rights
You choose which podcast to process and which moment to react to. You are responsible for the videos you make with Hearsay and for everything you publish.
You must hold the rights necessary for any source material you put into Hearsay, including the rights needed to reproduce a short excerpt of that audio inside your video. If you do not hold them, do not process the material. We do not review your source material, we do not clear rights on your behalf, and nothing in these terms grants you any rights in anyone else's podcast.
As between you and us, the videos you make are yours. We claim no ownership of them.
Quotation and excerpts
Hearsay works by placing a short excerpt of a third-party podcast inside original commentary, and by naming the source podcast and the speaker on screen and in the caption.
In some jurisdictions that kind of use is treated as quotation, fair dealing or fair use. In others it is not, or it depends on how long the excerpt is, what your commentary adds, and what you do with the result. Whether your particular use is lawful where you are is your responsibility to determine. Neither this document nor the software is a legal opinion that your use is permitted.
Publishing to your accounts
Publishing happens to social accounts that you connect and control. When you authorise Hearsay to post to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or X, the post is made as you, on your account, under that platform's terms.
Those terms apply to you directly and you are responsible for meeting them — including any rules a platform has about synthetic or AI-generated media, disclosure, and the use of other people's material. A platform may remove your content or restrict your account for reasons that have nothing to do with us, and we cannot reverse that. If a platform changes, restricts or withdraws its API, publishing to it may stop working.
No warranty; you review first
Hearsay writes with generative models. The commentary it produces can be wrong. It can misread a transcript, mischaracterise what a speaker meant, attribute a statement to the wrong person, or assert something as fact that is not one.
We do not warrant that generated output is accurate, original, or fit for any purpose. You must review every video before it is published. The software is built for that: nothing posts until a person approves it, and approving it is your decision. Once published, what the video says is yours.
To the extent the law allows, Hearsay is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free.
Acceptable use
Do not use Hearsay to:
- publish material that is defamatory, harassing, deceptive or unlawful;
- misrepresent what a speaker actually said, or present commentary as though it came from them;
- impersonate a real person;
- remove, obscure or contradict the disclosure line or the attribution that Hearsay puts on a video;
- process source material you have no right to use;
- break the terms of the platforms you publish to, or of the API providers whose keys you supply.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, for lost profits or lost content, or for claims brought against you arising from what you chose to publish.
Where liability cannot be excluded, our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these exclusions; where that is so, they apply only as far as the law permits, and nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
Termination
You can cancel at any time. Access continues until the end of the period you have already paid for.
We may suspend or end your access if you breach these terms, if we are legally required to, or if we stop offering the service. If we discontinue Hearsay we will give reasonable notice where we can.
When you stop using Hearsay, disconnect your social accounts and remove your API keys. The Privacy Policy sets out what is deleted, and when.
Changes to these terms
We may change these terms. If a change is material we will post the updated version on this page with a new date at the top and, where we reasonably can, tell you before it takes effect.
Continuing to use Hearsay after a change takes effect means you accept the updated terms. If you do not accept them, cancel.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of Canada, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The courts of Canada have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of them.
Nothing here removes any consumer right you have under the law where you live that cannot be waived by agreement.
Contact
Questions about these terms go to @kookventures on X.