Terms and conditions

These are the rules for using Verno. They are written to be read, not to be survived — if something here is unclear, that is a fault in the text and worth telling us about.

What Verno is

A place to build visual timelines: real history, invented history, or both at once. You add moments, and Verno helps you fill them in and gives them an image.

Verno is run by the Verno Foundation. You reach us at info@verno.foundation.

Your account

One account per person, and you keep the sign-in details to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account.

Your username is your public address on Verno. Change it and the old one keeps working as a link, so nothing you shared breaks.

You can delete your account at any time, from Settings → Account & privacy. Read the section on timelines below before you do.

What you make stays yours

The moments you write, the choices you make, the story you tell: yours. We do not claim ownership of any of it, and we will not sell it or license it to anyone.

By putting something on Verno you do give us permission to show it — to store it, to display it to the people you made it visible to, and to include it in the site itself. Set a timeline to public and you are inviting people to read it. That permission goes no further than running Verno.

About the images, and who owns them

Images and video on Verno are generated by AI models, on your instruction and at your cost in credits.

Verno claims no copyright over them. Not over the image, not over the prompt that made it. We do not sell them, license them to anyone, or use them to promote Verno without asking you first.

Whether you own them is a different question, and we cannot answer it. In the Netherlands and across the EU, copyright protects human creative choices. How much of your choosing has to go into a generated image before it counts is unsettled, and courts in different countries have answered it differently. If it matters to you — if you plan to print it, sell it, or build something on top of it — get advice from someone qualified. Verno gives no guarantee, and that risk is yours, not ours.

The models were trained on material we did not choose and cannot inspect. That means an image can come out resembling existing work without anyone intending it. So: do not use Verno to imitate a living artist by name, and do not try to reproduce someone else's protected work. If you recognise something in an image you generated, do not publish it.

Everything generated on Verno is marked as AI-generated, wherever it appears. That marking is not decoration — it is how a reader knows what they are looking at, and removing or obscuring it is a misuse of the site.

If you hold rights to something that appears here, tell us. There is a form at verno.foundation/report — you do not need an account to use it. A person reads every notice. If a claim holds up we take the material down and tell the maker why, and if it does not we tell you that instead.

What is not allowed

The full list is in the code of conduct, and it is part of what you agreed to. In short: nothing that EU law puts out of bounds — material involving minors sexually, terrorist content, incitement to violence or hatred, denying or glorifying genocide and crimes against humanity, sexual images of real people without their consent, other people's personal data, threats and harassment, fraud. Opinions are not on that list, however unwelcome; the line runs at people, not at ideas.

Invented history is welcome — it is half of what Verno is for. Passing off invented history as fact is not. Verno marks what is fiction and what is not, and undermining that on purpose is a misuse of the site.

If you break these rules we may hide your work, block your account, or take a timeline over. We will say why, unless saying why would make things worse.

Credits

Some things cost credits: images, video, recordings, longer stories. Text suggestions do not. You get credits when you sign up, and the cost of each action is shown before you confirm it.

Credits have no cash value and cannot be paid out. If something fails through our fault, the credits come back — that happens automatically, and you can see it in your ledger.

Prices can change. A change never applies to something you already paid for.

Buying credits

You buy credits in packages, or for an amount you choose yourself. The price is on the button before you click it, and that is what you pay — VAT included, wherever you live. The VAT rate differs by country; the amount you see does not.

Who you are buying from. Payment runs through Polar, and for that transaction Polar is the seller — not Verno. They take the payment, account for the VAT and send the invoice. The purchase agreement for that payment is with them; the credits you get are ours, and everything on this page still applies to those.

Nothing renews. There are no subscriptions. You buy once, and nothing is charged again until you buy again.

Your credits arrive at once. That is why the fourteen-day right of withdrawal does not apply: it does not cover digital content delivered immediately at your request. By buying, you ask for that immediate delivery and give up that right.

We do not refund as a matter of course, and never credits you have spent. Credits have no cash value and are not paid out. If something went wrong, write to us; we will look at it, and where it is our mistake we will put it right.

But what is spent is spent. The moment you have an image, a video or a story made, that money has already gone to the model that made it. It does not come back to us, not even if the purchase were reversed afterwards. A refund can therefore only cover credits you still hold.

If we do refund, those credits come off at that same moment — even though the money takes a few days to reach you. Otherwise you could spend them while the amount is already on its way back.

Timelines outlive accounts

This one matters, so it is not buried: when you delete your account, your timelines are not deleted. They are transferred to a Verno management account and stay visible to whoever could already see them.

This is on purpose. Verno is a web of timelines that link to each other, and one person leaving should not tear holes in everyone else's work. Your name comes off; the work stays.

If you want your timelines gone, delete them yourself before deleting your account. Then they really are gone.

A timeline held by the management account can be claimed by another user, who then continues it.

What we promise, and what we do not

We are building this in the open and we run it carefully, but Verno is young. Things break, models fail, generations go wrong. We do not promise the site is always available or that everything always works.

Keep your own copy of anything you would hate to lose. Settings → Account & privacy gives you a full download whenever you want it.

Historical material on Verno is written with the help of AI, and AI is confidently wrong sometimes. Each moment shows how certain it is and what it is based on. Use it as a starting point, not as a source.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for damage arising from using Verno. Nothing here limits your rights as a consumer, and nothing here limits liability for intent or gross negligence.

Ending it

You can stop at any time by deleting your account.

We can close an account that breaks these rules. Except in serious cases you will hear from us first and have a chance to respond, and you can always download your data.

Changes

These terms will change as Verno grows. Material changes are announced through what is new and the date at the top of this page moves. Continuing to use Verno after a change means you accept the new version; if you do not, you can delete your account.

Which law

Dutch law applies. If we cannot resolve a dispute together, it goes to the competent Dutch court — which does not affect your right, as a consumer, to take it to the court in the country where you live.