Core Talk — Terms of Use

These terms are the agreement between you and White Rock LTD — “we”, “us” — about Core Talk, our voice keyboard for iPhone. They are short, and they are worth two minutes of your time.

Your agreement is with us and not with Apple. Apple is not a party to these terms. We, not Apple, are solely responsible for Core Talk and for everything in it.

Core Talk is a keyboard for iPhone that you can type on and dictate into, in Russian and in English. Its app records your speech when you start a dictation and turns it into text on your iPhone, with speech models that come inside the app; the keyboard types the text into whatever field you are in. It works with no account and no network connection.

To dictate, you add the Core Talk keyboard in iOS Settings, give it Full Access, and allow the app to use the microphone. The app can keep the microphone on in the background for the time you choose, so that dictation starts instantly; iOS shows its microphone indicator while it is on, and you can turn it off in the app at any time. Typing works without any of that.

Core Talk has no in-app purchases, no subscriptions, no advertising and no paid tier — nothing is locked behind a payment, and everyone gets the same app.

If that ever changes, we will publish it on this page and in the app’s release notes before it takes effect, and it will not apply to the version you already have.

We grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use Core Talk on any Apple-branded device that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules set forth in the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions — except that Core Talk may also be accessed and used by other accounts associated with the purchaser through Family Sharing or volume purchasing. It is a licence to use the app, not a sale of it.

Please don’t sell, rent or sublicense Core Talk, and don’t copy, modify, decompile or reverse-engineer it — except where the law, or the licence of an open-source component listed in section 13, gives you that right whatever this clause says. Core Talk itself — its code, design, text and icons — stays ours, apart from those components. What you write with it is yours; see section 5.

Core Talk reaches you through the App Store, so Apple’s own rules for apps — the Usage Rules just mentioned — apply to your copy alongside these terms. Those rules govern what Apple delivered to you; these terms govern everything between you and us. Nothing here takes away a right that Apple’s rules or consumer law give you.

Core Talk recognises speech automatically, and automatic recognition is never perfect: it can mishear a word, pick the wrong language, miss something, add something, or punctuate oddly — more so in noise, with an accent, or with names and terms it has not met.

Read what it typed before you send it, publish it or rely on it. Don’t use Core Talk where a misheard word could hurt someone — to call for help in an emergency, for medical, legal or financial records, or for anything safety-critical.

Everything you dictate or type with Core Talk belongs to you. It stays on your iPhone and in the apps you type it into; we never receive it, we claim no ownership of it, and we do not use it for anything. Our privacy policy sets out exactly what the app keeps on your phone and for how long.

You are responsible for what you dictate and for where it goes. If other people can be heard while you dictate, it is up to you to respect whatever rules apply to recording or processing their speech where you are.

Don’t use Core Talk to break the law or to infringe anyone’s rights. That is the whole list.

We work on Core Talk continuously. Features may change or be withdrawn, and an update may be needed for the app to keep working with a new version of iOS.

You can end this agreement at any time by deleting the app — which also deletes everything it keeps on your phone. If you break these terms, your licence ends and you should delete the app.

Core Talk is provided as is, without warranty of any kind. We don’t promise that it will run uninterrupted or without errors, or that it will recognise what you say correctly. Nothing here takes away a right you have under consumer law that cannot be waived.

If Core Talk nevertheless fails to conform to a warranty that applies to it, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund you the purchase price — which, for Core Talk, is nothing. To the maximum extent permitted by law, that is the whole of Apple’s warranty obligation. Any other claim, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense attributable to such a failure is our sole responsibility, not Apple’s.

Core Talk is a free app, and our liability is proportionate to that. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for lost data, for a misrecognised word or what follows from it, or for anything arising out of your use of — or inability to use — Core Talk. Nothing in these terms excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

We alone are responsible for maintaining and supporting Core Talk. Apple has no obligation whatsoever to provide any maintenance or support for it. Write to us at appsupport@white-rock.ae or through our support page.

We, not Apple, are responsible for dealing with any claim you or a third party may make about Core Talk or your possession or use of it — including product liability claims, any claim that the app fails to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims arising under consumer protection, privacy or similar law. We are also solely responsible for investigating, defending, settling and discharging any claim that Core Talk, or your use of it, infringes someone else’s intellectual property.

You must comply with the terms of any third-party service you use alongside Core Talk. In practice that means the apps you type into, and your mobile network operator. Core Talk itself relies on no third-party service: it has no sign-in and makes no network connection.

Core Talk includes open-source software and speech models, each under its own licence:

• GigaAM v3, and the GigaAM sample recordings used by the performance test — MIT License
• NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• Silero VAD — MIT License
• sherpa-onnx — Apache License 2.0, with the open-source libraries built into it, each under its own licence (Apache 2.0, BSD, MPL 2.0, MIT or zlib)
• ONNX Runtime — MIT License
• parts of OpenWhispr — MIT License
• a LibriSpeech sample recording used by the performance test — CC BY 4.0

The licence texts and copyright notices (for the CC BY 4.0 material, the notice and a link to the licence, as that licence allows) are in the app: Settings (the gear on the main screen) → «О программе» → «Лицензии» (About → Licences). Nothing in these terms limits what those licences allow you to do with those components.

By using Core Talk you represent and warrant that you are not located in a country that is subject to a U.S. Government embargo or that the U.S. Government has designated as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

Apple and Apple’s subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms. When you accept them, Apple has the right — and is deemed to have accepted that right — to enforce these terms against you as a third-party beneficiary.

These terms are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates, and disputes about them are subject to the courts of Abu Dhabi. If you are a consumer, that choice does not take away the protection given to you by the mandatory rules of the country you live in, and it does not stop you bringing a claim in the courts there.

If we change these terms, we will publish the new version on this page with a new effective date, and mention anything material in the app’s release notes. Continuing to use Core Talk after that date means the new version applies to you.

White Rock LTD, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Questions, complaints or claims about Core Talk should go to appsupport@white-rock.ae.

Legal and privacy notices: appsupport@white-rock.ae. Everything else: our support page.

If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, the rest stays in force. These terms, together with the privacy policy, are the whole of the agreement between us about Core Talk; Apple’s own rules for apps, described in section 3, apply alongside them.