Terms of Service

Effective August 27, 2026. Kauli is a product of Forge Media Services, operated by Godfrey Njoroge.

1. What Kauli is

Kauli transcribes, translates and (optionally) dubs audio and video between Swahili, English and Kikuyu. Every AI-drafted transcript and translation is reviewed by a human editor before it's marked ready for delivery. Kikuyu currently uses a human transcriber instead of a speech-recognition model - no production-ready one exists yet, though research versions do - see our blog post on this for the full honest answer.

2. Your account

You're responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for activity that happens under your account. Give us accurate contact details - we use them to deliver your orders and reach you about them.

3. What you upload

You must own the rights to, or have permission to use, everything you submit to Kauli. Don't upload content you don't have the rights to, or content that's illegal to possess or distribute. We scan every upload for malware and validate it's genuine audio/video before processing it, but that's a safety check, not a rights check - that responsibility is yours.

Voice cloning (available on the "dub" service level) only ever runs after you explicitly confirm you hold the rights and consent to use the voice being cloned. That confirmation is required at the point of use, not assumed from you submitting a file.

4. No deepfakes, no impersonation

Kauli exists to help someone's own real words reach an audience in another language, in their own voice - not to put new words in anyone's mouth. Voice cloning is only ever used to translate what a speaker actually said in the source recording; there is no feature to type new, different text and have it spoken in a cloned voice. We don't accept orders intended to create deepfakes: fabricating statements a real person never made, impersonating someone without their consent, or using a cloned voice or likeness to mislead, defame, or deceive. We reserve the right to refuse, cancel, or report any order that appears intended for this, and to require proof of consent for the voice being cloned before processing continues.

5. Pricing & payment

Orders are priced per audio-minute at the published rates on our pricing page, plus any add-ons you choose. The first 5 minutes each month are free, and apply only to transcription-only orders (a preview of the transcript, not a downloadable file) - see our FAQ for the full detail. Payment is handled by Paystack (card, M-Pesa, Airtel Money) - we never see or store your card number or M-Pesa PIN. A direct M-Pesa STK-push option is coming; it isn't live yet. Prices may change; we'll post the new rates here and on our pricing page before they take effect.

6. Refunds

We don't currently run an automatic refund system. If an order genuinely didn't meet what was promised - the wrong language, a broken file, a mistake on our end - contact us and we'll make it right: a redo, a credit toward a future order, or a refund, decided case by case.

7. Who owns the output

You own the rights to whatever you upload and to the transcripts, translations, subtitles and dubbed files we deliver back to you. We don't claim ownership of anything created for your order, and we don't reuse your content for anything beyond delivering that order unless you ask us to.

8. Service availability

This runs on infrastructure sized for where the business is today, not enterprise-scale redundancy - see our status page for real, live system state. We aim for reliable service but don't guarantee uninterrupted uptime, and we're not liable for delays or losses caused by factors outside our reasonable control.

9. Limitation of liability

Kauli is provided as-is. To the extent the law allows, our liability for any claim related to the service is limited to the amount you actually paid us for the order in question. We're not liable for indirect or consequential losses.

10. Ending the relationship

You can stop using Kauli at any time. We may suspend or close an account that abuses the service, submits content in violation of section 3, or doesn't pay for completed work. Orders already in progress or delivered remain billable.

11. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Kenya.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the service changes. Material changes will be posted here with a new effective date.

13. Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected] or 0712 531 841.