The terms for using Helm Express.

1. What the service is — and is not

Helm Express builds a synthetic population of a US place from public population records, asks a language model to answer your question in the voice of each synthetic resident or business, and weights the answers back to the place. Every result is simulated. No human was surveyed. No result describes what any real person thinks, said or did. Results are directional: each carries an interval and a standing caveat, and they exist for comparing framings, options and segments — not for forecasting demand or turnout, and not as evidence of a real population’s opinion.

2. Who can use it

You must be at least 18 and able to enter a binding contract. If you use the service for an organisation, you confirm you may bind it, and “you” means both of you. You are responsible for everything done under your account; keep your sign-in secure and tell us if it is compromised.

3. Plans, allowances and billing

Polling is subject to a daily usage allowance where one is set. It is measured in model tokens and resets at 00:00 UTC; when it is spent, polling pauses until then and the rest of the service keeps working. How large it is depends on the deployment you are using, and a deployment may set none. A paid plan multiplies it, and the plan page states by how much; while Pro is not on sale, every account is on the same allowance. We may change the allowance. Pro is a paid subscription billed in advance by Stripe for each billing period; it renews until you cancel, and you can cancel at any time through the billing portal, keeping access until the end of the period already paid for. What Pro includes and its price are shown before you subscribe, and taxes may be added where they apply. We may change prices with at least 30 days’ notice; a change applies from your next renewal.

4. Your content

Content is anything you put into the service: questions, options, pasted links, uploaded images, audio and video, and data files, such as customer lists and CRM exports. You keep whatever rights you have in it. You grant us a licence to store, copy, transmit and process it — including sending it (other than data files, which never go to a model provider) to the model providers named in the Privacy Policy — for the sole purpose of running the service for you. We do not use your content to train models and we do not publish it.

You are responsible for your content. In particular, by uploading an image, audio or video file you warrant that you own it or hold the rights needed to use it this way, and that you have obtained any consent the law requires from every person who appears in it or can be heard on it — including under biometric-privacy laws such as the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act where they apply. Do not upload material you are not entitled to, recordings made without the consent the law requires, or confidential information you are not entitled to share.

By adding a data file, you warrant that you have the right to upload the customer records in it and to let us process them to provide the service, and that you will not upload records you are not entitled to share.

We may remove content or refuse an upload that we believe breaks these terms or the law, and we may keep a copy where the law requires it.

5. Outputs

Outputs are the results, verdicts, interviews, descriptions, transcripts and exports the service produces. As between you and us, you may use them for any lawful purpose, subject to these terms. Outputs are generated by a machine and may be wrong, biased, incomplete, or unreproducible in ways that are not obvious. They are not professional, legal, financial, medical or political advice. If you publish, quote or rely on an output, you must make clear that it is simulated — for example: “Results are simulated by Helm Express; no human was surveyed.” You may not present an output as a survey, poll or study of real people.

Share links. You can publish one poll result as a read-only page at a secret URL. Anyone holding that URL can read it, with no account and no sign-in — treat the URL as the permission itself, and share it only with people you would show the result to. The page carries the question, the result and its full method receipt, and it carries the “simulated, no human was surveyed” disclosure for you, so publishing one satisfies the paragraph above. It does not carry your identity, your organisation, your other work, or any file you attached. A link expires — by default after 30 days and never more than a year — and you can switch it off at any time, which takes effect immediately; but we cannot recall what somebody has already read, copied or forwarded. You are responsible for what you publish this way, and everything in these terms about your content and your outputs applies to it.

6. Prohibited uses

The service runs on models from Anthropic and OpenAI. Their usage policies — the Anthropic Usage Policy and the OpenAI Usage Policies — apply to everything you do here and are part of these terms. In addition, you may not use the service or its outputs to:

• deceive voters — including misinformation about when, where or how to vote, who is eligible, or what a ballot measure does;
• make or spread false claims about a candidate, an election, its results or its administration;
• target, profile, evaluate, or generate content about a named private individual;
• impersonate a person or organisation, or present synthetic quotes as real ones;
• harass, threaten or discriminate against people, or make decisions about an individual’s access to credit, housing, employment, insurance or public services;
• produce or spread content the providers’ policies forbid, such as child sexual abuse material, weapons uplift or malware;
• break the law, infringe anyone’s rights, or upload material you are not entitled to;
• probe, overload, scrape or reverse-engineer the service; bypass rate limits, usage allowances or access controls; or resell access.

7. Third-party data notices

The map and the real-business directory use third-party data under open licences; their notices are on the Notices page. Real businesses shown in the directory are facts from that data and are never given simulated opinions. If you redistribute directory data you received from the service, the licence notice the API attaches to it must travel with it.

8. Suspension and termination

You can close your account at any time by emailing us; we delete it as the Privacy Policy describes. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, is used for a prohibited purpose, or exposes us or others to legal risk, and we may refuse service to anyone. Sections 4 to 6 and 9 to 11 survive termination.

9. Disclaimer

THE SERVICE AND ITS OUTPUTS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT OUTPUTS ARE CORRECT, THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT ANY RESULT WILL MATCH WHAT A REAL POPULATION WOULD SAY.

10. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, HELM IS NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA OR GOODWILL, ARISING FROM THE SERVICE OR ITS OUTPUTS, HOWEVER CAUSED. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS IN ANY TWELVE-MONTH PERIOD IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THAT PERIOD, OR ONE HUNDRED US DOLLARS IF YOU PAID NOTHING.

Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits; there, they apply only as far as the law permits.

11. Indemnity

You will defend and indemnify Helm against claims, losses and costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your content, your use of outputs, or your breach of these terms — including any claim by a person recorded in a file you uploaded.

12. Copyright complaints (DMCA)

If you believe content on the service infringes your copyright, send a notice to support@populationtwins.com with the subject “DMCA” containing: the work you own; the material you say infringes it and where it is; your contact details; a statement that you believe in good faith the use is unauthorised; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for the owner; and your physical or electronic signature. We act on complete notices and may close the accounts of repeat infringers.

13. Changes to the service and to these terms

We may change or discontinue features. We may change these terms; the date at the top changes with them, account holders are told by email before a material change takes effect, and continued use after that is acceptance. If you do not agree, stop using the service and close your account.

14. General

These terms are the whole agreement between you and Helm about the service. If part of them is unenforceable, the rest stands. You may not assign them; we may assign them to a successor. Nothing here limits rights the law gives you that cannot be limited by contract. Questions: support@populationtwins.com.