Terms of use

1. Who provides this, and what it is

The Studying Suite is provided free of charge by Business Meets Tech e.V., c/o WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Burgplatz 2, 56179 Vallendar. vall.ai is a division of that association and not a legal entity of its own. Full provider details are in the imprint.

These terms cover the free WHU account for knowledge sharing, use cases, tools, downloads and the Studying Suite. The account provides access and does not synchronise the Suite learning library. That library remains in your browser profile and is not separated by account. Hosting and account verification use our external infrastructure; AI features use your chosen provider. The association is independent of WHU and the university does not supervise your use of the app.

1a. Who it is for, and what the way in stores

The account is available to WHU students, faculty and staff, and alumni with a supported WHU email address. You provide your address, category and, where applicable, programme and graduation year or current enrolment, and accept these terms. Mailbox confirmation verifies control of the address, not enrolment through a university register. Registration verifies your mailbox through a single-use link valid for 15 minutes; requesting another replaces the previous link. You set a password for future sign-ins. Existing accounts can set or reset their password through email verification, which revokes previous sessions. A session lasts up to 365 days unless you sign out or it is revoked. The account is free, has no minimum term and does not require a newsletter subscription. The privacy policy describes stored account and security data. Acceptance of these terms is not consent to advertising or other optional data processing.

Access is personal; do not share passwords, confirmation links or sessions. Access requires continued eligibility in the WHU community. We may suspend access for misuse or another good reason, subject to statutory rights. You can sign out or delete your account in the account area, or contact jan.klassen@whu.edu. Deletion ends the account agreement. Protected content and the Suite require an online account check; unavailable checks do not grant offline access. Account deletion and sign-out do not erase your local Suite library or API keys. Export anything you want to keep before ending access and erase local data through the Suite settings or your browser's site-data controls. Other users of the same browser profile can access that local data; use separate profiles on shared devices.

2. Your own API key, and the costs on it

Every AI function needs an account with one of the AI providers the app supports (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral or OpenRouter) and an API key that you obtain yourself. The contract for that account is between you and that provider, on their terms, and you alone are billed for it. We receive no share, set no prices, and have no influence on what a request costs.

Costs can add up quickly: generating cards for a whole course sends lectures separately. Set a spending limit in your provider’s console. Charges are governed by your contract with that provider. Our liability is governed by section 5 below.

3. What you upload is your responsibility

When you use an AI function, the material concerned goes directly from your browser to the provider you chose, authenticated with your key. It does not pass through us at any point, and we can neither see it, retrieve it, nor delete it. For document generation, Anthropic, Gemini and OpenAI receive PDFs; the Mistral and OpenRouter integrations receive locally rendered page images. Batch generation may process two lectures concurrently. The provider’s charges and processing rules apply to each request.

The data-protection roles for a transfer depend on its purpose, your context and the provider’s contract. Private personal study can fall outside the GDPR under the household exemption; other uses may require a legal basis and, where appropriate, a processing agreement. These terms do not designate every user as a controller or every AI provider as a processor. You must have the right to share the material: lecture slides may be copyrighted and documents may contain other people’s personal data.

4. AI output can be wrong, and your data lives only on your device

Flashcards, mind maps, exam questions, model answers, marks and feedback are generated by an AI system. Such systems produce plausible-sounding output that can be factually wrong, incomplete or outdated. Everything the app generates is a study aid only. It is not authoritative, replaces neither your lectures nor your textbooks nor your instructors, and practice marks bear no relation to any grade from any institution. Whether your use complies with your institution's rules on academic integrity is for you and that institution to settle, not for us.

Your study content is stored in this browser profile. Other people using the same profile can access it and the saved API keys; use separate browser profiles on shared devices. Changing browser or device does not transfer your library. Clearing site data or closing a private session can delete it. The app offers backup export and import; exports omit API keys. We cannot restore local data that has not been backed up.

5. Warranty and liability

The software is provided free of charge as a study aid. AI output can contain errors, and availability also depends on your browser and the selected AI provider. These statements do not exclude statutory rights relating to defects, updates or other contractual obligations.

Liability is governed by the applicable statutory provisions. No limitation of liability is derived merely from the absence of a price. Mandatory consumer rights, including rules on digital products where applicable, remain unaffected.

Some liability cannot be limited by any wording, and is not limited here: liability for intent and gross negligence, liability for injury to life, body or health, liability under the Produkthaftungsgesetz, and liability under any guarantee expressly given. No such guarantee is given.

Should any provision of these terms be or become invalid, the validity of the remainder is unaffected.

5a. What you submit: use cases and survey answers

When you submit a use case, you grant the association a free, non-exclusive right, unlimited in time and place, to publish it on this site, to shorten, translate or edit it for that purpose, to let others vote on it, and to build tools from it. You confirm that you may share what you submit and that it contains no personal data of other people. We may decline or remove a submission; whether we take one up is our decision.

Free-text answers to a survey are used to evaluate it. They may be quoted in the published results, shortened and without anything that identifies you.

5b. Otto, the AI assistant

Otto is an AI assistant, not a person. He answers from this site's content and can still be wrong or out of date. His answers are not legal, medical, financial or academic advice and do not replace official information from WHU. Do not enter sensitive personal data into the chat.

5c. Events

This site lists events. Unless an event page says otherwise, they are organised by others, and registration takes place on Luma, an external service, under the terms of Luma and of the organisers. We are not a party to that registration. We check the dates we list with care but cannot guarantee that an event takes place as listed.

5d. Changes to these terms

If these terms change in a way that matters for you, we tell you by email beforehand. A new version applies to you only once you have agreed to it; until then the version you accepted continues to apply. If you do not want to agree, you can delete your account at any time.

6. Licence, and the law that applies

The Studying Suite software is released under the MIT Licence, Copyright © 2026 Business Meets Tech e.V. You may use, copy, modify and distribute it, provided the copyright and licence notice are retained and no warranty is implied. It builds on open-source components under their own licences, and provider names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Skills and other downloads, the instructions of the agents, and the articles on this site are protected by copyright. You may use and adapt them for your own studies and your own work. Passing them on to others in bulk, publishing them elsewhere or selling them requires our consent in text form.

German law applies, to the extent permitted. Where you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your habitual residence. Questions: jan.klassen@whu.edu.