Switchboard · Legal
This is the agreement between you and Protocol 42 Inc. for the use of Switchboard. We have tried to write it so that you can actually read it. Where a clause matters more than the ones around it, we have said so rather than burying it in capital letters.
Switchboard is operated by Protocol 42 Inc., a corporation incorporated in Ontario, Canada. In this agreement “we”, “us” and “our” mean Protocol 42 Inc., and “you” means the person or organisation using Switchboard.
These terms, together with the Acceptable Use Policy, the Privacy Policy and the list of AI providers and sub-processors, form the whole of the agreement between us. If you do not agree to them, do not use Switchboard.
They take effect for you on the day you first create an account or use the service.
You are responsible for your account, for keeping access to it secure, and for everything done through it. Tell us at support@switchboardai.ca as soon as you think someone else has got into it.
Give us accurate information and keep it current — in particular a working email address, because that is how we send billing notices, notices of changes to these terms, and anything the law requires us to tell you. One account is for one person or one organisation. Do not share credentials, and do not open extra accounts to get around a plan limit.
Switchboard is a workspace that sends your message to an artificial-intelligence model and returns what the model produces. We do not build or train the models. We choose between models built and operated by other companies, route each message to one of them, and show you what came back along with what it cost your allowance.
Around that we provide the parts that are ours: the routing, the spending controls, file handling and document export, project knowledge, dictation, image generation, the ability to connect your own tools, and the record of what was used.
Everything Switchboard returns is generated by software, not by a person. You are never speaking to a human being when you are using the chat.
When you send a message, that message — and any file, image or recording attached to it — is transmitted to a third-party AI provider to be processed. That happens whether you chose the model or Switchboard chose it for you, and it usually means your content leaves Canada.
The companies we send content to, what each one does, and the country it operates from are listed on the AI providers and sub-processors page. That list is versioned and we keep it current. By using Switchboard you agree to your content being transmitted to and processed by those providers for the purpose of answering you.
Where something in a provider’s terms conflicts with this agreement, this agreement governs the relationship between you and us, and the provider’s terms govern your use of that provider’s model.
“Output” means whatever the service returns in response to what you send it: text, code, images, transcriptions, summaries and anything else.
As between you and us, we assign to you whatever rights we may have in the Output generated from your input. We say whatever rights we may have deliberately: the law in Canada and elsewhere is unsettled on whether material generated by a machine attracts copyright at all, and nobody can honestly promise you that it does. We do not warrant that you own the Output, that it is original, or that using it will not infringe someone else’s rights. Output is not unique — another person who asks a similar question may receive a similar answer, and it will be theirs to use too.
A model predicts likely text. It does not know things, and it does not check. It can invent facts, citations, quotations, case names, statutes, prices, dates, medical and financial figures, and working code that does not work — and it will present all of them in the same confident, specific, well-organised voice it uses when it is right. Detail and fluency are not evidence of accuracy. Check anything you are going to rely on, before you rely on it.
Output is not professional advice. It is not legal, medical, psychological, accounting, tax, engineering, investment or financial advice, and it is not a substitute for a qualified professional who is accountable to you. Protocol 42 Inc. is not a law firm, a medical practice, an accounting firm, a registered investment adviser, a broker-dealer or a lender, and nothing the service produces creates a professional relationship of any kind.
You are responsible for evaluating Output before you use it, share it, publish it or act on it, including by having a person review it where the stakes warrant. That responsibility does not move to us because the answer was confident, because it cited a source, or because the service selected the model for you.
Do not use Output as the basis for a decision that has a legal or similarly significant effect on someone — about credit, lending or insurance; employment, hiring, promotion or discipline; housing or tenancy; education or admission; immigration; healthcare; benefits; or any legal right — unless a qualified person reviews the decision and takes responsibility for it. The Acceptable Use Policy sets this out in full.
Do not present Output as the work of a human being where that would mislead someone, and do not represent that Output was written, reviewed or endorsed by Protocol 42 Inc. or by any AI provider.
Every image Switchboard creates is marked as AI-generated in two ways. You see a label on the image in the app. The file itself carries machine-readable metadata — an XMP packet recording the IPTC digital source type of trained algorithmic media, the model that drew it and the date — which travels with the file when you download it, so that a platform, a newsroom or a moderation system can tell what it is without having to ask you.
Two honest limits on that. First, the mark is a declaration, not a cryptographic proof: it is not a signed C2PA Content Credential, and we do not claim it cannot be removed. Second, metadata is fragile — editing an image, screenshotting it, or uploading it to a service that re-encodes images will often strip the mark, and many do this routinely. We are telling you this rather than letting you assume the label is permanent.
Do not strip the marking in order to pass a generated image off as a photograph, and do not present a generated image as a real photograph, a real document or a real person. Where you publish a generated image, the obligation to label it is yours as well as ours; several jurisdictions now require it, and we cannot discharge that duty on your behalf once the file has left the service. The Acceptable Use Policy sets out what you must not depict.
“Your content” means what you put into Switchboard: messages, files, images, recordings, project knowledge and anything else you supply.
Your content stays yours. You give us the narrow licence we need to run the service for you and nothing more: to host, store, transmit, process and display your content, to reformat it where a provider requires a particular structure, and to send it to the AI provider handling your request. That licence exists so that we can answer you, it lasts only as long as we hold the content, and it ends when you delete the content or close your account.
You promise us that:
Think about what you put in. Switchboard is a general-purpose consumer and business service, not a regulated environment. It is not certified for, and should not be used for, information whose disclosure would be seriously harmful — including health records, government identification numbers, payment card numbers, and material subject to a professional duty of confidence or to a security classification.
We do not use your content to train AI models. Not our own, and we do not licence it to anyone else to train theirs. We do not sell your content.
Where a provider offers a setting that prevents your content from being retained or used for training, we turn it on, and where a routing service lets us refuse providers that retain prompts, we refuse them. The providers page records what each one does.
Two honest limits on that. First, these settings are the providers’ to honour, not ours to enforce; we can choose carefully and we do, but we cannot audit another company’s data centre. Second, we may keep and review specific content where we have to: to investigate a suspected breach of the Acceptable Use Policy, to deal with a security incident, to answer a legal obligation, or where you send it to us as feedback or as part of a support request.
Switchboard lets you connect your own services — a code repository, a database, a project tracker — so a model can read from them, and, if you allow it, act on them.
Do not connect a service you are not entitled to connect, and do not use a connection to reach data you are not entitled to reach.
The Acceptable Use Policy is part of this agreement and you must follow it. It covers what Switchboard may not be used for, what we require in high-risk fields, and what happens when someone ignores it. It also binds anyone you let use your account.
We may update it — usually because a provider has changed its own rules, or because someone has found a new way to misuse the service. Material changes are notified in the same way as changes to these terms.
Each plan includes a monthly allowance, expressed in tokens for text, in counts for images and in minutes for dictation, together with limits on how many tools you can connect and how often they can run. What each plan includes is shown on the pricing page and in your account, and what you have left is shown on the Usage page as you go.
Prices are in United States dollars and are shown before you subscribe. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see or store your full card number.
A subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period, at the price then in force for your plan, and we charge the payment method on file, until you cancel. We tell you this at checkout and ask you to agree to it specifically.
You can cancel at any time from your account settings, in as many clicks as it took to subscribe, without telephoning or emailing anyone and without having to argue with a retention screen. Cancellation stops the next renewal; your plan keeps working until the end of the period you have already paid for.
If we change the price of your plan, or change what it includes in a way that reduces it, we will tell you by email at least 30 days and not more than 60 days before the change takes effect. The notice will set out what is changing, the new wording, the date it starts, and how to respond. You may cancel before it takes effect and pay nothing further. We do not treat silence as agreement to a price increase.
Prices exclude sales taxes, which we add where we are required to collect them. If a payment fails we may retry it, and may pause the plan until it succeeds. You are responsible for any fee your bank or card issuer charges.
We will keep changing Switchboard: adding features, replacing models with better ones, and sometimes removing things that do not work. We may change or discontinue any part of the service.
If we discontinue a paid feature that materially reduces what your plan includes, or discontinue the service altogether, we will give you reasonable notice and refund the unused part of what you have paid.
We may amend these terms, the Acceptable Use Policy, the Privacy Policy and the providers list. Each document carries a version number and the date it came into force.
Switchboard is new, and as at 18 September 2026 it is being used by a small group of invited testers and early customers. We would rather you knew that than found out.
You can stop using Switchboard whenever you like, and close your account from your settings.
We may suspend or close an account, or restrict a feature, if we reasonably believe that you are breaching this agreement or the Acceptable Use Policy, that continuing would break the law or a provider’s rules, that there is a security or fraud problem, or that the account is being used in a way that threatens the service or other customers. Where the circumstances allow it, we will tell you first and give you a chance to put it right. Where they do not — most obviously with content that endangers a child — we act immediately.
A decision made automatically can be reviewed by a person. Some of these controls run without human involvement. If an automated system suspends your account or blocks a request and you think it is wrong, write to support@switchboardai.ca and a person at Protocol 42 will look at it and reply.
When an account closes, we delete its content on the schedule in the Privacy Policy, except records we are required to keep — the usage and billing record, and the audit log, which does not contain the text of your conversations. Export what you want to keep before you close it.
Switchboard — the software, the interface, the routing system, the brand, the marks and everything we have written — belongs to Protocol 42 Inc. and its licensors. You get the right to use the service under this agreement, and nothing else is granted to you by implication.
Do not copy, resell or redistribute the service; do not reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to derive the routing logic or any underlying component, except to the extent the law expressly permits it despite this clause; do not remove any notice of ownership; and do not use our name or marks in a way that suggests we endorse you.
If you send us an idea, a bug report or a suggestion, we may use it freely and without owing you anything. You keep whatever rights you already had; you are simply not restricting us. Do not send us anything confidential as feedback.
If you believe material stored or shared through Switchboard infringes your copyright, write to legal@switchboardai.ca with enough detail to identify the work, the material and your authority to act, and a way to contact you.
We operate under Canadian law. Under the notice-and-notice regime in the Copyright Act, we forward a compliant notice to the account concerned and keep the required records. We are not obliged to remove material on the strength of a notice alone, and we will not pretend otherwise — but we do act on repeated or obvious infringement, including by closing accounts.
We provide Switchboard with reasonable skill and care. Beyond that, and to the fullest extent the law allows, the service is provided as it is and as it is available, and we do not promise that:
If you are a consumer, the law of your province or state gives you rights and implied warranties that cannot be signed away — in Ontario, for example, a service is deemed to be of a reasonably acceptable quality, and any term that tries to take that away is void. Nothing in this agreement limits or excludes any right, condition, warranty or remedy you have under consumer protection law that cannot lawfully be excluded. Where this section conflicts with such a right, the right applies and this section does not.
To the fullest extent the law allows, neither party is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost goodwill, lost opportunity, or the loss or corruption of data, however caused and on any theory of liability, even if the possibility was known.
To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability arising out of or relating to this agreement or your use of Switchboard is limited, in aggregate, to the greater of one hundred United States dollars (US$100) and the total amount you paid us for the service in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.
These limits do not apply to:
These limits reflect how this agreement is priced. Switchboard is sold for a few dollars a month and routes to systems we do not control; we could not offer it on these terms while accepting unlimited exposure for what a model produces. The limits survive termination and apply even if a remedy in this agreement fails of its essential purpose.
If you are using Switchboard as a consumer, for your own personal or household purposes, this section does not apply to you and you are not asked to indemnify us.
If you are using Switchboard for business purposes, or on behalf of an organisation, you will defend and indemnify Protocol 42 Inc., its directors, officers and employees against any third-party claim, and any resulting loss, damage, liability, cost or reasonable legal fee, arising from your use of the service, your content, your breach of this agreement or of the Acceptable Use Policy, your violation of law or of anyone’s rights, anything you build or provide using Output, and the acts of anyone you allow to use your account.
We will tell you promptly about any such claim, and we may take over its defence at our own expense, in which case you will cooperate with us. You may not settle a claim in a way that imposes an obligation or an admission on us without our agreement.
This agreement is governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the laws of Canada that apply there, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.
The courts of Ontario have jurisdiction over any dispute, and we both submit to them. If you are a consumer, this does not take away your right to bring proceedings in the courts of the province, territory or state where you live, or your right to rely on the consumer protection law of that place. Canadian courts have been clear that a company cannot use a standard-form contract to push a consumer into a forum they cannot practically reach, and we are not trying to.
Almost everything is fixable by email. Before starting anything formal, please write to legal@switchboardai.ca describing the problem and what you would like us to do. We will respond within 30 days and try in good faith to settle it. You are free to go to court if that does not work, and nothing here stops you from making a complaint to a regulator or a consumer protection authority at any time — we do not ask you to give that up, and a term that tried to would be void.
Either of us may also seek an injunction from a court at any time to stop misuse of the service, a breach of confidence or an infringement of intellectual property.
Canadian consumer protection law makes mandatory arbitration and class-action waivers unenforceable against consumers, and we are not going to include a clause we know to be void. If you are in Canada, skip this section: section 23 and section 24 govern, and your right to take part in a class proceeding is untouched.
This section applies only if you are a resident of the United States. Read it: it affects how a dispute between us would be decided.
Protocol 42 Inc. is a corporation incorporated in Ontario, Canada, and operates Switchboard at https://www.switchboardai.ca.