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You guys read Z.ai's terms of service, right? Broad and perpetual license over inputs and outputs, and even your name and profile picture. Vague prohibitions

You guys read Z.ai's terms of service, right? Broad and perpetual license over inputs and outputs, and even your name and profile picture. Vague prohibitions on whatever may harm Z.ai’s "interests" or even the "national interests" of any country. Vague prohibitions on "disturbing" or "inappropriate" content, whatever that is. Vague prohibitions on discussing Z.ai, even my posting this comment violates it. Can ban you if you, in the "sole and absolute opinion" of Z.ai, have violated these broad terms, and if you paid for the discounted yearly plan kiss your money goodbye.

culi 2mo ago
you can abliterate any open model like this. This is pretty standard stuff in a TOS. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find the same in OAI or Anthropic's
Lwerewolf 2mo ago
The model weights are MIT licensed.
- matheusmoreira 2mo ago
  I'm talking about the Z.ai service specifically.
  - Lwerewolf 2mo ago
    As others have mentioned, nothing's stopping any other major provider from offering it. Given its popularity, you can guess how that'll develop. So, overall, irrelevant.
g3f32r 2mo ago
Isn't this practically every TOS though? Nearly every TOS I've ever read has a "We can ban you for any reason, or no reason, are under no obligation to disclose any reason." line somewhere in it. HN's for example > We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change or modify portions of these Terms of Use at any time. > You acknowledge that Y Combinator may establish general practices and limits concerning use of the Site, > You further acknowledge that Y Combinator reserves the right to change these general practices and limits at any time, in its sole discretion, with or without notice. > Y Combinator reserves the right to investigate and take appropriate legal action against anyone who, in Y Combinator’s sole discretion, violates this provision, including without limitation, removing the offending content from the Site, suspending or terminating the account of such violators and reporting you to the law enforcement authorities.
- moralestapia 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - blazarquasar 2mo ago
    This is not uncommon. Also, it only applies to their chat offering, not the api. OpenRouter also offers the API with ZDR. While shitty, i’d say that its really not that special.
    - moralestapia 2mo ago
      ??? None of the major LLM chat providers (ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, and I just confirmed this) claim rights over your input. They also don't claim rights over your output, but because of how copyright law might apply, they explicitly assign all the rights to the generated output. Not just that but, even if they wanted to claim ownership of the output, courts in the US have deemed that copyright cannot be assigned to machine-generated output. So yeah, happy to take a look at a counter-example if you have one (aside from GLM 5.3, obv.).
      - blazarquasar 2mo ago
        > In choosing to submit, create, generate, record, post, or display Inputs on or through the Service, you grant an irrevocable, perpetual, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, and worldwide right to SpaceXAI to use, copy, store, modify, process, adapt, transmit, distribute, reproduce, publish, upload, download, display in public forums, list information regarding, make derivative works of, and distribute such Content, including anything referenced therein, in any and all media or distribution methods now known or later developed, for any purpose, and to aggregate your User Content and derivative works thereof for any purpose, including but not limited to: (i) maintain and provide the Service; (ii) improve our products and the Service and for our other business purposes, such as data analysis, customer and market research, developing new products or features, or identifying or displaying usage or User Content trends; and (iii) perform such other actions to enforce these Terms, comply with our Privacy Policy, comply with applicable law or governmental, court, and law enforcement requests or requirements or keep our Service safe. > To the extent the User Content includes a person’s image, likeness, voice, or other similar attributes, you grant SpaceXAI the same rights to use those attributes as part of the User Content as described above. You represent and warrant that you have obtained all rights, licenses, notices, permissions, and consents necessary for SpaceXAI to use that User Content. https://x.ai/legal/terms-of-service https://x.ai/legal/terms-of-service These are arguably even worse to be honest. Absolute nightmare.
zaj00l 2mo ago
I get all that. Then alternatives are: - Grok - where I absolutely have 0 trust in X.ai's interst in "pushing humanity forward". - OpenAI and Anthropic - which seem to try to be building the biggest moat they can by pushing to ban open models. And at the same time want to be an Arbiter of what level of intelligence I can use. - Google and Meta - I don't need to talk about the practices of these companies. Yes, the terms of service aren't great. But the alternatives aren't great either. I don't believe that a future which OpenAI and Anthropic are pushing for has my best interest in mind.
- bestouff 2mo ago
  Or Deepseek, Qwen, any other open model hosted by whoever you trust most.
- zuzululu 2mo ago
  All the American companies you mentioned still follow American law and regulation. Skirting that blatantly has big consequences. Chinese companies do not follow American laws and there are absolutely no consequences for violating it. Moreover, the average American is not even aware of exactly what the legal/judicial environment is like in China. If your code and data is stolen, you can't fly to China and demand justice in the courts.
  - croes 2mo ago
    Aren’t those American companies sued because they didn’t follow American law?
    - alexandra_au 2mo ago
      OpenAI is being sued by Apple, yes
  - Implicated 2mo ago
    > All the American companies you mentioned still follow American law and regulation. Skirting that blatantly has big consequences. > Chinese companies do not follow American laws and there are absolutely no consequences for violating it. ... lmk when anthropic/openai/spacex/xai are held accountable for anything. Anything at all. Hard to be when you're _writing_ the rules.
zarzavat 2mo ago
It's China. It's a given that they use your data for training. At least they're nice enough to be honest about it.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- yogthos 2mo ago
  It's not like US companies don't do the same either.
  - trvz 2mo ago
    It’s implied that they do, but don’t have the balls to tell you they do.
    - gpt5 2mo ago
      They tell you, and allow you to opt out in certain plans.
      - well_ackshually 2mo ago
        Except when their automated reviews decides that you've written something dangerous, in which case they'll use it for training. And no, they won't tell you what their automated reviews consider "dangerous".
        mannanj 2mo ago
        And neither will they make clear what "analytical purposes" is for the data you can't opt out of. So they give you the ability to "opt-out" of "training purposes", and then you still share everything for analytical purposes (which you can't opt out of). It's a smart tactic on their side if they are contributing to cultural discourse on this to keep the straw man focus on training data. And also to have the popular AI straw man: that your data isn't valuable and oh man they're losing so much money on tokens and giving you a subsidy, so you you better use up your entire subscription balance weekly/daily/every 5h putting in all your "worthless" data that you miss out otherwise (FOMO). Oh man only way it could get worse is if they implemented gambling slots psychology.
scotty79 2mo ago
TOS is and will ever be just a "pretty please".
microtonal 2mo ago
The model is MIT-licensed, so run it on any of the non-Chinese inference providers that will host it in a few days.
- PhilippGille 2mo ago
  NovitaAI is already hosting it: https://openrouter.ai/z-ai/glm-5.3-flash#providers https://openrouter.ai/z-ai/glm-5.3-flash#providers
  - minimaxir 2mo ago
    And now pretty much everyone is hosting it, with some matching the 50% discount.
realusername 2mo ago
They all do that, some are just more honest to tell you upfront than others.
NicoJuicy 2mo ago
Chinese laws are not valid in the EU
- jtbayly 2mo ago
  That’s pretty funny to say when the EU claims GDPR applies worldwide.
  - croes 2mo ago
    What they don’t do. They claim that the GDPR applies if you provide your service in the EU, and that’s a valid claim.
    - jtbayly 2mo ago
      They obviously don’t have a valid claim to be able to tell everyone who wants to put a website on the internet that they have to do it the EU way, which is what we’re actually talking about.
      - croes 2mo ago
        If the site can be viewed in the EU, it has to follow EU rules. Not different from other countries. What do you think why the normal polymarket site is blocked for US users.
        jtbayly 2mo ago
        I’ve got a bunch of sites that can be viewed from (checks notes) the internet. If people in Europe don’t like that, they can block it, or choose not to visit it. In the meantime, you’ve proven exactly what I first said, which is that they are claiming it applies worldwide. Here I am, just putting a site on the internet, and you’re telling me I have to follow EU laws concerning it. Nope. I don’t.
        croes 2mo ago
singularity2001 2mo ago
I blocked Z.ai as soon as they were loading 10 different external providers including Alibaba who was just proven to execute silent sound fingerprinting mechanisms.
- gf000 2mo ago
  > silent sound fingerprinting mechanisms I hope you also block the other half of the internet because sure as hell google and facebook are way worse than that.
  - singularity2001 2mo ago
    Yes, definitely blocked.
- itvision 2mo ago
  Does it work with NoScript?
colingauvin 2mo ago
Who the hell cares when I can run it myself?
throwawayffffas 2mo ago
None of that applies if you run it at home. Also 3rd party providers will start serving this pretty soon under different terms.
- matheusmoreira 2mo ago
  > None of that applies if you run it at home. Yeah, running frontier open weight models on my own hardware has essentially become my dream at this point. I hope the hardware manufacturers step up production to meet consumer demand.
mrinterweb 2mo ago
Give it a couple days, and there will be plenty of other inference companies hosting it. Don't like z.ai's TOS? Use the model on a provider with TOS that you agree with.
glub 2mo ago
> Can ban you if you, in the "sole and absolute opinion" of Z.ai, have violated these broad terms. OpenAI revoked my Cyber verification, along with many others, asked to reverify (i.e. give my biometric information to Persona), had me do it 8 times, just to find out several days later that they silently implemented a nationality whitelist, and my nationality didn't make it (and no, it's not a sanctioned country). Their support says they can't look into anything or do anything, and their public spokespersons on X deny everything. I get tons of cyber refusals now (lots of reverse engineering), so it's only matter of time when my account is going to get banned. At least Z.AI is being honest here. And no provider other than OAI/ANT had me submit my biometric information just to use Ghidra.
- matheusmoreira 2mo ago
  > just to find out several days later that they silently implemented a nationality whitelist, and my nationality didn't make it (and no, it's not a sanctioned country) How did you discover this? I opened the Persona tab once, closed it and the tab never opened ever again. "Precheck failed". What countries are banned? I'm from Brazil. I went as far as initiating an LGPD (brazilian GDPR) process against them due to this. At some point I got it in writing that I'm allowed to make a new account and try again. Until now I was assuming it was just some weird account state. If I'm banned from TAC due to my nationality that's seriously disgusting...
  - glub 2mo ago
    When they initially revoked TAC for a bunch of users due to a "technical error", the TAC verification flow opened a Persona iframe where you select the document country first. I was able to select it there (Georgia, in my case), went through the entire flow, and then got locked out after 8 attempts. Persona itself was successful end to end, so it failed somewhere on the OAI side. Other users then started reporting the exact same issue on the OpenAI forum. A week later, I tried testing the TAC flow on my SO's account, which had never had a TAC attempt before. Selecting Georgia in the Persona iframe now says, "We are unable to verify identities in this country." But I know this isn't a Persona limitation, as I verified with Anthropic using Persona the same day. So what I think happened was this: OpenAI silently implemented a country whitelist on their end and revoked TAC for affected individuals who already had it, calling it a "technical issue". They forgot to disable those countries in Persona, so everyone just got a cryptic error. Then they disabled them in Persona too. Interaction with support was AI with human names, which essentially just repeats what you said. And it ended with: > I’m unable to provide additional details about verification outcomes, and Support cannot manually override the result. At this time, Trusted Access for Cyber verification does not support retries or appeals. I even provided them my credentials, and support AI was basically: lol wat we're here to check technical errors, your credentials are of no relevance.
deadbabe 2mo ago
> Vague prohibitions on "disturbing" or "inappropriate" content, whatever that is. I have prompted out a lot of disturbing and inappropriate content with GLM-5.2, that would have left other American models blanched in the face or clutch their pearls. I think this is mostly a reference to Anti-CCP stuff. In fact, I don't think I've ever even had a prompt refused.
- wewtyflakes 2mo ago
  It is cliche, but I haven't had good luck with having Chinese models openly discuss historical topics like Tienanmen Square. The US models don't seem to have a problem discussing history, even if it points an unglamorous light on the US government.
  - throw10920 2mo ago
    And there's a reason for that: the US government does not compel model trainers to train their models to paint them in a favorable light, while the PRC does.
- throw10920 2mo ago
  > In fact, I don't think I've ever even had a prompt refused. I very much have. I've gotten GLM-5.2 refusals for extremely benign security testing on my own infrastructure of the same flavor that people were getting (wrongly) flagged for on Fable during the initial release.
  - matheusmoreira 2mo ago
    That's alarming. I want to use these models to red team my own computers. How are people getting around this?
    - throw10920 2mo ago
      > I want to use these models to red team my own computers. Exactly what I was trying to use it for! ): I'm in the same boat - I haven't heard of a way to get around it aside from either self-hosting (GLM-5.2? good luck) or "self-hosting" (paying bucks per hour to Vast) an abliterated model.
well_ackshually 2mo ago
>Broad and perpetual license over inputs and outputs, and even your name and profile picture. >Vague prohibitions on whatever may harm Z.ai’s "interests" or even the "national interests" of any country. [...] may cause harm to Anthropic, our users, or third parties, we reserve the right to remove or take down some or all of such Third-Party Content using, where appropriate, algorithmic and human review. You may not export or provide access to the Services into any U.S. embargoed countries or to anyone on (i) the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals, (ii) any other restricted party lists identified by the Office of Foreign Asset Control, (iii) the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Persons List or Entity List, or (iv) any other restricted party lists >Vague prohibitions on "disturbing" or "inappropriate" content, whatever that is. we will use Materials for model training when [...] your Materials are flagged for safety review to improve our ability to detect harmful content, enforce our policies, or advance our safety research. >Vague prohibitions on discussing Z.ai, even my posting this comment violates it. >Can ban you if you, in the "sole and absolute opinion" of Z.ai, have violated these broad terms, and if you paid for the discounted yearly plan kiss your money goodbye. To engage in any other conduct that restricts or inhibits any person from using or enjoying our Services, or that we reasonably consider exposes us—or any of our users, affiliates, or any other third party—to any liability, damages, or detriment of any type, including reputational harms. Mind you, that's Anthropic's Terms of Use in Europe. I have zero doubts the TOS applied to the US is even worse and that merely mentioning your first born in a chat entitles them to a part of its soul.
mromanuk 2mo ago
You can download the weights, and run in your own hardware and avoid all that.
gunalx 2mo ago
Yes, the terms are dubious. But they are also reasonably lenient with enforcement. They also don't require persona id verification, witch is wat turned me away from openai.
- matheusmoreira 2mo ago
  Yeah, you're probably right... > They also don't require persona id verification, witch is wat turned me away from openai. Could be worse. I was dumb enough to verify, only to get rejected for unknown reasons with no retries and no appeals. Had my privacy violated and have nothing to show for it.
  - dannyw 2mo ago
    I will never use or verify biometrically with Persona. I don’t care how out of the way I have to go, but I will never do it. Working well so far.
  - 8cvor6j844qw_d6 2mo ago
    Yeah, this is worse. "Come verify your identity." "Thanks, we've got your ID. Still not approving you, and there's no appeal." Worst of both worlds.
computerex 2mo ago
How is that vastly different from any other non-enterprise facing provider? I do believe Anthropic bans accounts without even a human in the loop with no recourse left to those banned.
joelthelion 2mo ago
As long as the weights are open, who cares? You can rely on someone else for inference.
janalsncm 2mo ago
Are their TOS significantly more vague or restrictive than OpenAI or Anthropic’s? In any case what matters is what is enforced in practice. It will be a mild inconvenience to switch providers on Openrouter. If Anthropic or OpenAI decide to apply those same arbitrary terms, you are SOL.
- matheusmoreira 2mo ago
  > Are their TOS significantly more vague or restrictive than OpenAI or Anthropic’s? Yeah, I've compared both. The US companies generally aren't as vague, and they don't claim ownership over inputs and outputs.
  - nijave 2mo ago
    Z.ai doesn't claim ownership either. >you retain all rights, title, and interest in the Prompts ... However, it does grant them an irrevocable license to do, effectively, anything with the data Not a lawyer but I think the practical difference is you can still license to others, sell, sue IP infringers
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
mcintyre1994 2mo ago
Isn’t the point with these open models that you find a provider with the right terms of use/data sovereignty for you and get it from them?
itvision 2mo ago
Anthropic has banned me for using Claude via a VPN. They don't even allow me to download my data. How is it better?
pizzafeelsright 2mo ago
This is a China derived model. Interactions with different leadership styles, governments, datasets, and culture impact the resulting AI. I suspect any model connected or built by China will serve their interest despite their terms and agreements.

culi 2mo ago

you can abliterate any open model like this. This is pretty standard stuff in a TOS. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find the same in OAI or Anthropic's

Lwerewolf 2mo ago

The model weights are MIT licensed.

matheusmoreira 2mo ago
I'm talking about the Z.ai service specifically.
- Lwerewolf 2mo ago
  As others have mentioned, nothing's stopping any other major provider from offering it. Given its popularity, you can guess how that'll develop. So, overall, irrelevant.

g3f32r 2mo ago

Isn't this practically every TOS though? Nearly every TOS I've ever read has a "We can ban you for any reason, or no reason, are under no obligation to disclose any reason." line somewhere in it. HN's for example > We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change or modify portions of these Terms of Use at any time. > You acknowledge that Y Combinator may establish general practices and limits concerning use of the Site, > You further acknowledge that Y Combinator reserves the right to change these general practices and limits at any time, in its sole discretion, with or without notice. > Y Combinator reserves the right to investigate and take appropriate legal action against anyone who, in Y Combinator’s sole discretion, violates this provision, including without limitation, removing the offending content from the Site, suspending or terminating the account of such violators and reporting you to the law enforcement authorities.

moralestapia 2mo ago
[flagged]
- blazarquasar 2mo ago
  This is not uncommon. Also, it only applies to their chat offering, not the api. OpenRouter also offers the API with ZDR. While shitty, i’d say that its really not that special.
  - moralestapia 2mo ago
    ??? None of the major LLM chat providers (ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, and I just confirmed this) claim rights over your input. They also don't claim rights over your output, but because of how copyright law might apply, they explicitly assign all the rights to the generated output. Not just that but, even if they wanted to claim ownership of the output, courts in the US have deemed that copyright cannot be assigned to machine-generated output. So yeah, happy to take a look at a counter-example if you have one (aside from GLM 5.3, obv.).
    - blazarquasar 2mo ago
      > In choosing to submit, create, generate, record, post, or display Inputs on or through the Service, you grant an irrevocable, perpetual, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, and worldwide right to SpaceXAI to use, copy, store, modify, process, adapt, transmit, distribute, reproduce, publish, upload, download, display in public forums, list information regarding, make derivative works of, and distribute such Content, including anything referenced therein, in any and all media or distribution methods now known or later developed, for any purpose, and to aggregate your User Content and derivative works thereof for any purpose, including but not limited to: (i) maintain and provide the Service; (ii) improve our products and the Service and for our other business purposes, such as data analysis, customer and market research, developing new products or features, or identifying or displaying usage or User Content trends; and (iii) perform such other actions to enforce these Terms, comply with our Privacy Policy, comply with applicable law or governmental, court, and law enforcement requests or requirements or keep our Service safe. > To the extent the User Content includes a person’s image, likeness, voice, or other similar attributes, you grant SpaceXAI the same rights to use those attributes as part of the User Content as described above. You represent and warrant that you have obtained all rights, licenses, notices, permissions, and consents necessary for SpaceXAI to use that User Content. https://x.ai/legal/terms-of-service https://x.ai/legal/terms-of-service These are arguably even worse to be honest. Absolute nightmare.

zaj00l 2mo ago

I get all that. Then alternatives are: - Grok - where I absolutely have 0 trust in X.ai's interst in "pushing humanity forward". - OpenAI and Anthropic - which seem to try to be building the biggest moat they can by pushing to ban open models. And at the same time want to be an Arbiter of what level of intelligence I can use. - Google and Meta - I don't need to talk about the practices of these companies. Yes, the terms of service aren't great. But the alternatives aren't great either. I don't believe that a future which OpenAI and Anthropic are pushing for has my best interest in mind.

bestouff 2mo ago
Or Deepseek, Qwen, any other open model hosted by whoever you trust most.
zuzululu 2mo ago
All the American companies you mentioned still follow American law and regulation. Skirting that blatantly has big consequences. Chinese companies do not follow American laws and there are absolutely no consequences for violating it. Moreover, the average American is not even aware of exactly what the legal/judicial environment is like in China. If your code and data is stolen, you can't fly to China and demand justice in the courts.
- croes 2mo ago
  Aren’t those American companies sued because they didn’t follow American law?
  - alexandra_au 2mo ago
    OpenAI is being sued by Apple, yes
- Implicated 2mo ago
  > All the American companies you mentioned still follow American law and regulation. Skirting that blatantly has big consequences. > Chinese companies do not follow American laws and there are absolutely no consequences for violating it. ... lmk when anthropic/openai/spacex/xai are held accountable for anything. Anything at all. Hard to be when you're _writing_ the rules.

zarzavat 2mo ago

It's China. It's a given that they use your data for training. At least they're nice enough to be honest about it.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
yogthos 2mo ago
It's not like US companies don't do the same either.
- trvz 2mo ago
  It’s implied that they do, but don’t have the balls to tell you they do.
  - gpt5 2mo ago
    They tell you, and allow you to opt out in certain plans.
    - well_ackshually 2mo ago
      Except when their automated reviews decides that you've written something dangerous, in which case they'll use it for training. And no, they won't tell you what their automated reviews consider "dangerous".
      - mannanj 2mo ago
        And neither will they make clear what "analytical purposes" is for the data you can't opt out of. So they give you the ability to "opt-out" of "training purposes", and then you still share everything for analytical purposes (which you can't opt out of). It's a smart tactic on their side if they are contributing to cultural discourse on this to keep the straw man focus on training data. And also to have the popular AI straw man: that your data isn't valuable and oh man they're losing so much money on tokens and giving you a subsidy, so you you better use up your entire subscription balance weekly/daily/every 5h putting in all your "worthless" data that you miss out otherwise (FOMO). Oh man only way it could get worse is if they implemented gambling slots psychology.

scotty79 2mo ago

TOS is and will ever be just a "pretty please".

microtonal 2mo ago

The model is MIT-licensed, so run it on any of the non-Chinese inference providers that will host it in a few days.

PhilippGille 2mo ago
NovitaAI is already hosting it: https://openrouter.ai/z-ai/glm-5.3-flash#providers https://openrouter.ai/z-ai/glm-5.3-flash#providers
- minimaxir 2mo ago
  And now pretty much everyone is hosting it, with some matching the 50% discount.

realusername 2mo ago

They all do that, some are just more honest to tell you upfront than others.

NicoJuicy 2mo ago

Chinese laws are not valid in the EU

jtbayly 2mo ago
That’s pretty funny to say when the EU claims GDPR applies worldwide.
- croes 2mo ago
  What they don’t do. They claim that the GDPR applies if you provide your service in the EU, and that’s a valid claim.
  - jtbayly 2mo ago
    They obviously don’t have a valid claim to be able to tell everyone who wants to put a website on the internet that they have to do it the EU way, which is what we’re actually talking about.
    - croes 2mo ago
      If the site can be viewed in the EU, it has to follow EU rules. Not different from other countries. What do you think why the normal polymarket site is blocked for US users.
      - jtbayly 2mo ago
        I’ve got a bunch of sites that can be viewed from (checks notes) the internet. If people in Europe don’t like that, they can block it, or choose not to visit it. In the meantime, you’ve proven exactly what I first said, which is that they are claiming it applies worldwide. Here I am, just putting a site on the internet, and you’re telling me I have to follow EU laws concerning it. Nope. I don’t.
        croes 2mo ago

singularity2001 2mo ago

I blocked Z.ai as soon as they were loading 10 different external providers including Alibaba who was just proven to execute silent sound fingerprinting mechanisms.

gf000 2mo ago
> silent sound fingerprinting mechanisms I hope you also block the other half of the internet because sure as hell google and facebook are way worse than that.
- singularity2001 2mo ago
  Yes, definitely blocked.
itvision 2mo ago
Does it work with NoScript?

colingauvin 2mo ago

Who the hell cares when I can run it myself?

throwawayffffas 2mo ago

None of that applies if you run it at home. Also 3rd party providers will start serving this pretty soon under different terms.

matheusmoreira 2mo ago
> None of that applies if you run it at home. Yeah, running frontier open weight models on my own hardware has essentially become my dream at this point. I hope the hardware manufacturers step up production to meet consumer demand.

mrinterweb 2mo ago

Give it a couple days, and there will be plenty of other inference companies hosting it. Don't like z.ai's TOS? Use the model on a provider with TOS that you agree with.

glub 2mo ago

> Can ban you if you, in the "sole and absolute opinion" of Z.ai, have violated these broad terms. OpenAI revoked my Cyber verification, along with many others, asked to reverify (i.e. give my biometric information to Persona), had me do it 8 times, just to find out several days later that they silently implemented a nationality whitelist, and my nationality didn't make it (and no, it's not a sanctioned country). Their support says they can't look into anything or do anything, and their public spokespersons on X deny everything. I get tons of cyber refusals now (lots of reverse engineering), so it's only matter of time when my account is going to get banned. At least Z.AI is being honest here. And no provider other than OAI/ANT had me submit my biometric information just to use Ghidra.

matheusmoreira 2mo ago
> just to find out several days later that they silently implemented a nationality whitelist, and my nationality didn't make it (and no, it's not a sanctioned country) How did you discover this? I opened the Persona tab once, closed it and the tab never opened ever again. "Precheck failed". What countries are banned? I'm from Brazil. I went as far as initiating an LGPD (brazilian GDPR) process against them due to this. At some point I got it in writing that I'm allowed to make a new account and try again. Until now I was assuming it was just some weird account state. If I'm banned from TAC due to my nationality that's seriously disgusting...
- glub 2mo ago
  When they initially revoked TAC for a bunch of users due to a "technical error", the TAC verification flow opened a Persona iframe where you select the document country first. I was able to select it there (Georgia, in my case), went through the entire flow, and then got locked out after 8 attempts. Persona itself was successful end to end, so it failed somewhere on the OAI side. Other users then started reporting the exact same issue on the OpenAI forum. A week later, I tried testing the TAC flow on my SO's account, which had never had a TAC attempt before. Selecting Georgia in the Persona iframe now says, "We are unable to verify identities in this country." But I know this isn't a Persona limitation, as I verified with Anthropic using Persona the same day. So what I think happened was this: OpenAI silently implemented a country whitelist on their end and revoked TAC for affected individuals who already had it, calling it a "technical issue". They forgot to disable those countries in Persona, so everyone just got a cryptic error. Then they disabled them in Persona too. Interaction with support was AI with human names, which essentially just repeats what you said. And it ended with: > I’m unable to provide additional details about verification outcomes, and Support cannot manually override the result. At this time, Trusted Access for Cyber verification does not support retries or appeals. I even provided them my credentials, and support AI was basically: lol wat we're here to check technical errors, your credentials are of no relevance.

deadbabe 2mo ago

> Vague prohibitions on "disturbing" or "inappropriate" content, whatever that is. I have prompted out a lot of disturbing and inappropriate content with GLM-5.2, that would have left other American models blanched in the face or clutch their pearls. I think this is mostly a reference to Anti-CCP stuff. In fact, I don't think I've ever even had a prompt refused.

wewtyflakes 2mo ago
It is cliche, but I haven't had good luck with having Chinese models openly discuss historical topics like Tienanmen Square. The US models don't seem to have a problem discussing history, even if it points an unglamorous light on the US government.
- throw10920 2mo ago
  And there's a reason for that: the US government does not compel model trainers to train their models to paint them in a favorable light, while the PRC does.
throw10920 2mo ago
> In fact, I don't think I've ever even had a prompt refused. I very much have. I've gotten GLM-5.2 refusals for extremely benign security testing on my own infrastructure of the same flavor that people were getting (wrongly) flagged for on Fable during the initial release.
- matheusmoreira 2mo ago
  That's alarming. I want to use these models to red team my own computers. How are people getting around this?
  - throw10920 2mo ago
    > I want to use these models to red team my own computers. Exactly what I was trying to use it for! ): I'm in the same boat - I haven't heard of a way to get around it aside from either self-hosting (GLM-5.2? good luck) or "self-hosting" (paying bucks per hour to Vast) an abliterated model.

well_ackshually 2mo ago

>Broad and perpetual license over inputs and outputs, and even your name and profile picture. >Vague prohibitions on whatever may harm Z.ai’s "interests" or even the "national interests" of any country. [...] may cause harm to Anthropic, our users, or third parties, we reserve the right to remove or take down some or all of such Third-Party Content using, where appropriate, algorithmic and human review. You may not export or provide access to the Services into any U.S. embargoed countries or to anyone on (i) the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals, (ii) any other restricted party lists identified by the Office of Foreign Asset Control, (iii) the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Persons List or Entity List, or (iv) any other restricted party lists >Vague prohibitions on "disturbing" or "inappropriate" content, whatever that is. we will use Materials for model training when [...] your Materials are flagged for safety review to improve our ability to detect harmful content, enforce our policies, or advance our safety research. >Vague prohibitions on discussing Z.ai, even my posting this comment violates it. >Can ban you if you, in the "sole and absolute opinion" of Z.ai, have violated these broad terms, and if you paid for the discounted yearly plan kiss your money goodbye. To engage in any other conduct that restricts or inhibits any person from using or enjoying our Services, or that we reasonably consider exposes us—or any of our users, affiliates, or any other third party—to any liability, damages, or detriment of any type, including reputational harms. Mind you, that's Anthropic's Terms of Use in Europe. I have zero doubts the TOS applied to the US is even worse and that merely mentioning your first born in a chat entitles them to a part of its soul.

mromanuk 2mo ago

You can download the weights, and run in your own hardware and avoid all that.

gunalx 2mo ago

Yes, the terms are dubious. But they are also reasonably lenient with enforcement. They also don't require persona id verification, witch is wat turned me away from openai.

matheusmoreira 2mo ago
Yeah, you're probably right... > They also don't require persona id verification, witch is wat turned me away from openai. Could be worse. I was dumb enough to verify, only to get rejected for unknown reasons with no retries and no appeals. Had my privacy violated and have nothing to show for it.
- dannyw 2mo ago
  I will never use or verify biometrically with Persona. I don’t care how out of the way I have to go, but I will never do it. Working well so far.
- 8cvor6j844qw_d6 2mo ago
  Yeah, this is worse. "Come verify your identity." "Thanks, we've got your ID. Still not approving you, and there's no appeal." Worst of both worlds.

computerex 2mo ago

How is that vastly different from any other non-enterprise facing provider? I do believe Anthropic bans accounts without even a human in the loop with no recourse left to those banned.

joelthelion 2mo ago

As long as the weights are open, who cares? You can rely on someone else for inference.

janalsncm 2mo ago

Are their TOS significantly more vague or restrictive than OpenAI or Anthropic’s? In any case what matters is what is enforced in practice. It will be a mild inconvenience to switch providers on Openrouter. If Anthropic or OpenAI decide to apply those same arbitrary terms, you are SOL.

matheusmoreira 2mo ago
> Are their TOS significantly more vague or restrictive than OpenAI or Anthropic’s? Yeah, I've compared both. The US companies generally aren't as vague, and they don't claim ownership over inputs and outputs.
- nijave 2mo ago
  Z.ai doesn't claim ownership either. >you retain all rights, title, and interest in the Prompts ... However, it does grant them an irrevocable license to do, effectively, anything with the data Not a lawyer but I think the practical difference is you can still license to others, sell, sue IP infringers

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

mcintyre1994 2mo ago

Isn’t the point with these open models that you find a provider with the right terms of use/data sovereignty for you and get it from them?

itvision 2mo ago

Anthropic has banned me for using Claude via a VPN. They don't even allow me to download my data. How is it better?

pizzafeelsright 2mo ago

This is a China derived model. Interactions with different leadership styles, governments, datasets, and culture impact the resulting AI. I suspect any model connected or built by China will serve their interest despite their terms and agreements.