Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2603.18964

Terms of (Ab)Use: An Analysis of GenAI Services

Harshvardhan J. Pandit·Dick A. H. Blankvoort·Adel Shaaban·Sasha Luccioni·Abeba Birhane
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Generative AI services like ChatGPT and Gemini are some of the fastest-growing consumer services. Individuals using such services must accept their terms of use before access, and conform to these terms for continued use of the service. Established literature has shown that despite their status as legally-binding agreements, terms of use are not actually well-understood, and may contain implications that are surprising for consumers. In this paper, we analyse the terms of 6 generative AI services from the perspective of an EU-based consumer. Our findings, based on a developed codebook which we provide in the paper, reiterate known issues regarding generative AI services such as the default use of user data for training and surface new concerns regarding responsibility, liability, and rights. All terms in our analysis contained language that explicitly discards assurances regarding the quality, availability and appropriateness of the service, regardless of whether the service is free or paid. The terms also make users solely responsible for outputs meeting norms dictated by the provider, despite no information or control being provided over the functioning of the model, and at the risk of account termination. The terms further restrict users in how outputs can be used while service providers utilise both user-provided inputs as well as user-liable outputs for a wide variety of purposes at their discretion. The implications of these practices are severe, as we find consumers suffer from lack of necessary information, significant imbalance of power, and have responsibilities they cannot materially fulfil without violating the terms. To remedy this situation, we make concrete recommendations for authorities and policymakers to urgently upgrade existing consumer protection mechanisms to tackle this growing issue.

Explore related subjects

cs.CY

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Harshvardhan J. Pandit, Dick A. H. Blankvoort, Adel Shaaban, Sasha Luccioni, Abeba Birhane. 2026-03-19. Terms of (Ab)Use: An Analysis of GenAI Services. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18964

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Work, Wellbeing, and Choice: Empirical Lessons for AI Futures

Advances in AI-driven automation have raised questions about how humans might find wellbeing in a world where paid employment is less necessary or less available than before. Paid work has been variously characterized as both a contributor and an impediment to human wellbeing. What is already known about the relationship between paid work and wellbeing? What factors influence wellbeing among people who do not work---or who do not need to work? And how might these factors bear upon prospective AI-induced economic transformations? To help provide empirical grounding for these questions, we survey the psychological, sociological, and economic literature that investigates the relationship between wellbeing and work. We draw on evidence from multiple populations, including the unemployed, retirees, lottery winners, and financially dependent spouses. This comparative review draws from studies across OECD countries, China, India, and Gulf states. We identify three key factors that mediate the relationship between work status and wellbeing: (1) agency and choice---whether the exit from work is voluntary or involuntary, as well as long-term agency; (2) the availability of alternative sources of work's latent benefits---such as volunteering, hobbies, or state-provisioned employment; and (3) social and systemic context---including cultural norms around work and the robustness of social safety nets. We draw on these three factors to derive specific implications for different AI automation scenarios, connecting the empirical evidence to concrete policy considerations.

cs.CY↗
arXiv2026

From Digital Accountability to Accountable Digitality Through Needs-Aware Information Systems: The Case of Auditable Child-Welfare Judgments

Digital accountability research asks how digital systems can, among other aims, be made transparent, explainable, auditable, contestable, and supportive of ongoing learning and improvement. This paper reverses the question: how can digital transformation make established human institutions more accountable? It theorizes this reversal as accountable digitality and specifies needs-aware information systems as the mediating mechanism. The hard and paradigmatic case is child-welfare judgment, where best-interest procedures must protect children, preserve confidentiality, and respect judicial independence while enabling aggregate learning about needs, reasons, exceptions, and disparities. The case is used diagnostically and illustratively to derive and examine the design logic, not as empirical evidence or validation. Conceptual design-oriented analysis decomposes and recombines digital and legal accountability under child-rights constraints, deriving a canonical theory-to-design chain, contingent mechanisms, implications, and safeguards. It advances IS responsibility and ethics research by showing how privacy-preserving, co-created, needs-aware information systems can support institutional self-knowledge and auditable justice.

cs.CY↗
arXiv2026

(Whose defaults?) Is artificial intelligence reorienting archaeological methods?

Generative AI and the practice of "vibe coding" are changing how archaeologists carry out computational research, but their effects on the discipline's range of methods is still understudied. In this paper, we evaluate whether large language models (LLMs) are narrowing the variety of methods archaeologists use. We first analysed approximately 119,000 archaeology abstracts from Scopus, covering publications from 2010 to 2025. Using a locally run LLM, we identified the computational methods reported in each abstract and organised them into 25 broad categories (L2) and 241 finer clusters (L3). A Bayesian Dirichlet-multinomial model of method composition within sub-disciplines found a small but credible shift in method use after 2023. However, this shift was smaller than the variation already present across the full study period. No individual technique showed a significant change, and overall methodological diversity increased rather than declined. We then ran a controlled experiment to see whether LLMs recommend a narrower set of methods than archaeologists have used in practice. Two different open-weight models were asked to suggest methods for 28 archaeological research problems, with prompts providing three levels of methodological guidance: novice, intermediate, and expert. Recommendation diversity was much lower than in the published literature, particularly without methodological guidance. The models also tended to favour methods that were widely used before 2023, and their recommendations more closely resembled the post-2023 literature. Taken together, these results are consistent with LLMs pushing methodological choice towards convergence, although our study cannot establish a causal effect. They raise a broader question: how can archaeology retain methodological diversity as LLMs become more involved in research?

cs.CY↗