Copyright and Likeness

Hriday Vanka owns, or is licensed to use, the things we made for Yuga:

• the Yuga website and apps, their design and their software code;
• the voxel characters that represent each figure and each visitor’s “host”, and the rooms the figures sit in, which we designed;
• the text we wrote: figure summaries, the research notes behind each figure, the instructions that shape how each figure speaks, the website’s pages, and these legal pages;
• the name Yuga and our logo (see section 11).

You may link to Yuga and quote short passages from our pages with credit. Please don’t copy our characters, code or text wholesale. What you may do with the figures’ replies in your own conversations is set out in our Terms of Use.

We don’t claim ownership of:

• the historical figures themselves. Their names, the facts of their lives and the events they took part in belong to history, not to us;
• the writings, speeches and letters the figures draw on. We use public-domain texts and openly licensed material, described in section 3. Their authors and the projects that published them deserve the credit;
• photographs on our website, which belong to the photographers credited in section 13;
• the fonts our website uses, which are open-source and also credited in section 13.

Yuga is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any figure, their family or estate, or any institution named in a conversation, unless we say so on that figure’s page.

Each figure is a character our AI plays. It is not the real person. Behind each character are two things:

1. A research record that we wrote: when and where the figure lived, what they did, what they believed and how they spoke, with the sources for each point.
2. A library of source passages that the figure can quote. During a call, Yuga searches this library for passages that fit the question and gives them to the AI. The library holds:
   • the figure’s own writings, speeches and letters, from Project Gutenberg and Wikisource (public domain in the United States) and the Internet Archive (items published before 1930, or openly licensed);
   • quotations that Wikiquote lists as sourced. We leave out quotations Wikiquote marks as disputed or misattributed, and use the misattributed ones only so a figure can say “I never said that”;
   • biographical passages from Wikipedia. Wikipedia and Wikiquote text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence, and we credit their contributors in section 13.

The AI is told to quote only words that appear in those passages and to mark each quotation with its source, so the app can show you where it came from: the transcript marks replies that quote their own writing. Anything else a figure says is the AI’s paraphrase or its reasoning in character, and the app labels it as inferred. The AI can still get things wrong. Our AI and Content Policy page explains how to read what the figures say.

Voices. The figures’ voices are stock voices from Google Cloud Text-to-Speech or, later, voices designed for each figure from a written description. No voice is copied or cloned from a recording of the real person, and the description used to design a voice never names the figure.

Looks. Each figure appears as a voxel character, built from blocks, that we designed from historical descriptions of how they looked. It is our own drawing, not a photograph or a copy of a portrait.

A person’s name, image, voice and likeness can stay protected after their death. These rights are often called personality rights or rights of publicity, and they are usually controlled by the person’s family or estate, or a company acting for them. For example:

• California protects a deceased person’s name, voice, signature, photograph and likeness for 70 years after death (California Civil Code section 3344.1);
• New York protects the name, voice and likeness of deceased performers and personalities who died on or after 29 May 2021, for 40 years after death, including against digital replicas (New York Civil Rights Law section 50-f);
• Tennessee protects a person’s name, image, likeness and, since 2024, voice after death (the Personal Rights Protection Act, as amended by the ELVIS Act);
• India: courts protect personality rights, including against misuse by AI, and the law on how far they survive death is still developing. Separately, the Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950 restricts commercial use of the names and pictures of certain national figures;
• many other countries protect a person’s name, image or memory after death in their own ways.

Writings can also stay in copyright for many years after an author dies: in many countries, for 70 years after death, and in India for 60 years from the year after death.

What we do. We keep a rights note for every figure: who, if anyone, controls their name, likeness, voice or writings. Figures who died recently enough that their likeness, voice or writing may be protected are put in a group we hold back. We don’t offer any figure in that group, in the apps or on the website, and we don’t give them an AI voice, until we have permission from whoever holds the rights. Some other figures, such as religious founders, national leaders, people from recent conflicts and people whose stories belong to living communities, are offered only after extra review and with extra care in how they speak.

If you think we have got a figure wrong, or you hold rights we have overlooked, please tell us (see section 5).

We want the families, estates and communities connected to the people in Yuga to be comfortable with how they are shown. If you are a relative, an estate, a trust, a rights holder or a community representative, write to support@foundationalcreations.com.

What to include

• your name and contact details, and your connection to the figure or the work (for example, executor of the estate);
• if you act for someone else, who, and how you are authorised to act for them;
• the figure, and where the problem appears: a link to the figure’s page, or a description of what the figure said and when;
• what the problem is: a factual error, something you find offensive, a use of protected material, or a right you hold;
• what you would like us to do.

We don’t keep transcripts of conversations, so if a figure said something in a call, please tell us what was said, or send a screenshot.

If you use Yuga yourself, you can also tap Report this reply in the call screen of our iPhone or Android app as a quick first flag. A report reaches us with the figure, the reply and the message before it, but it doesn’t tell us who you are or let us reply to you. A formal notice or request must still come by email, as described on this page.

How we respond

We will acknowledge your message within 5 working days and give you a decision, with our reasons, within 30 days. If we need more time or more information, we will tell you why. If the matter is urgent, for example something harmful or hurtful that a figure is saying now, say so in the subject line and we will act on it first.

What we can do

• Correct a figure’s research record, so the figure stops repeating an error;
• Add context: a historian’s note, or guidance on how the figure should speak about a subject;
• Change or remove a source from the figure’s library of passages;
• Change the figure’s voice, or their look;
• Remove the figure from Yuga, for a time or for good, or hold them back until we have agreed terms with you.

If you believe something in Yuga infringes your copyright, send a written notice to our designated agent. Under the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)), your notice must include:

1. a physical or electronic signature of a person authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright;
2. identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed or, if several works are covered by a single notice, a representative list of them;
3. identification of the material you claim is infringing and that you want removed, with enough information for us to find it (for example, the figure, the page address, or what the figure said);
4. your address, telephone number and, if available, email address, so we can contact you;
5. a statement that you have a good faith belief that the use of the material in the way complained of is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent or the law;
6. a statement that the information in the notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the right that is allegedly infringed.

Our designated agent: Copyright Agent, Hriday Vanka, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, India. Email: support@foundationalcreations.com.

Our agent is registered with the United States Copyright Office’s DMCA Designated Agent Directory ([DMCA AGENT REGISTRATION: TO DO BEFORE LAUNCH]).

A notice that leaves out these elements may not be valid, but we will still read it and may ask you for what is missing. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), anyone who knowingly makes a material misrepresentation in a notice or counter-notice can be liable for damages. If you’re not sure whether something infringes your rights, please consider asking a lawyer first.

You don’t need to be in the United States to use this process. We apply the same approach to copyright complaints from anywhere.

Visitors can’t publish or upload anything on Yuga, so most removals concern our own material and a counter-notice will rarely apply. But if material you provided was removed after a copyright notice and you believe that was a mistake, you can send our designated agent a counter-notice. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3), it must include:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. identification of the material that was removed or disabled, and where it appeared before it was removed;
3. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material;
4. your name, address and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district in which your address is located (or, if your address is outside the United States, any judicial district in which we may be found), and that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice, or their agent.

When we receive a valid counter-notice, we will send a copy to the person who sent the original notice. Unless they tell us within 10 business days that they have started a court action to stop the infringement, we will restore the material between 10 and 14 business days after we received the counter-notice.

We will close, in appropriate circumstances, the account of anyone who repeatedly infringes others’ copyright or other rights through Yuga, and we may block their further use of the service. Our Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy explain how we suspend and close accounts.

If you are in the European Union and believe something in Yuga is illegal, you can send us a notice. To help us act on it, please include:

• a clear explanation of why you believe the information is illegal;
• exactly where it is: the figure and page address, or a description of what the figure said and when;
• your name and email address (you don’t need to give them if your notice concerns child sexual abuse material);
• a statement that you believe, in good faith, that the information in your notice is accurate and complete.

We will confirm that we received your notice, look at it carefully, objectively and without delay, and tell you what we decided and how you can challenge the decision. If we remove or restrict something, we will explain why. We do not decide notices by automated means alone.

Single point of contact. Our single point of contact for users, and for the authorities of EU member states, the European Commission and the European Board for Digital Services, is support@foundationalcreations.com. You can write to us in English. Our representative in the European Union is none.

Orders from courts and the government. When we receive an order from a court, or a notice from the appropriate government or its authorised agency, to remove or disable access to information under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, as amended in 2026, we will act on it within 3 hours.

Grievance Officer. Anyone can complain to our Grievance Officer, Pranay Vanka, at support@foundationalcreations.com. We will acknowledge your complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within 7 days. If your complaint is that something in Yuga impersonates you or shows you in a false, intimate or sexual way, including in an artificially created form, we will act on it within 2 hours. Other requests to remove content that the rules prohibit will be resolved within 36 hours. See Grievance Redressal and Contact.

If you are not satisfied with the Grievance Officer’s decision, you can appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee within 30 days, at gac.gov.in.

“Yuga” and the Yuga logo are trademarks of Hriday Vanka. Please don’t use them in a way that suggests we endorse or work with you, without asking us first.

Other names that appear in Yuga, including some figures’ names and the names of institutions, may be trademarks of their owners. We use them only to say who or what we are talking about. That use does not mean the owner endorses Yuga. If you own a trademark and believe we use it wrongly, write to support@foundationalcreations.com.

AI makes mistakes. Despite our instructions, a figure may put words in a real person’s mouth that they never said, get a fact wrong, or say something that hurts a real person’s reputation. We also don’t want anyone to take what a figure says and pass it off as something the real person said.

Please tell us if you see:

• a quotation presented as genuine that the real person never said or wrote;
• a false or damaging statement about a real, living person;
• a figure’s words, or Yuga’s name, being used elsewhere to deceive people, for example a fake quotation shared as real.

In a call in our iPhone or Android app, the quickest way is to tap Report this reply. Reports aren’t linked to you or your account and are deleted after 12 months. If you want an answer from us, or the problem is elsewhere, write to support@foundationalcreations.com with the figure, what was said (a screenshot helps, because we don’t keep transcripts) and, for misuse elsewhere, where you saw it. We will correct the figure’s record or instructions where we can. Our Acceptable Use Policy forbids using Yuga to deceive people, and our AI and Content Policy page explains the limits of what the figures say.

Photographs

Photographs on our website are from Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License, by Filip Mroz, shalender kumar, Joséphine Messien, Zetong Li, T, Joseph Quam, Jens Peter Olesen, bishnu sarangi, Constantinos Kollias and Mo Gabrail. Thank you.

Fonts

Our website uses Bricolage Grotesque and IM Fell English, both under the SIL Open Font License, version 1.1. We serve them from our own server.

Sources

The figures quote and draw on texts from Project Gutenberg, Wikisource and the Internet Archive, and on text written by the contributors to Wikipedia and Wikiquote, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. When a figure quotes a passage, the app shows where it came from.

• Copyright, likeness, and requests from families and estates: support@foundationalcreations.com
• EU notices and trademarks: support@foundationalcreations.com
• Grievances in India: Pranay Vanka, support@foundationalcreations.com
• Fake quotes and errors: support@foundationalcreations.com

By post: Hriday Vanka, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, India.