Legal

QNAP AI Terms

Last updated: October 1, 2026

 

These QNAP AI Terms (these “Terms”) are established by QNAP Systems, Inc. (“QNAP,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) and apply to artificial intelligence-related features provided in our products and services. As used in these Terms, “AI Features” means the features provided by QNAP in its products or services that use artificial intelligence technologies. When you use the AI Features, the QNAP Software Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy will also apply, as appropriate to the nature of the relevant AI Feature; each of those terms applies separately to the matters it governs.

As used in these Terms, “you” means the user or administrator who enables, configures, deploys, or operates the AI Features. If you enable or deploy the AI Features on behalf of an organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind that organization to these Terms.

1. The AI Features

1.1 These Terms govern your rights and obligations in connection with your use of the AI Features. The AI Features include, without limitation, image recognition, generative AI, and conversational AI.

1.2 The AI Features are intended solely to provide assistance, and their output may be incomplete, inaccurate, or inappropriate. Accordingly, you must comply with the following when using the AI Features:

1.2.1 Before taking any action or making any decision based on output, you must verify its accuracy, completeness, and appropriateness in light of the specific circumstances and exercise independent judgment. You must not use the AI Features or their output as a substitute for professional advice.

1.2.2 You must not make decisions that may have legal effects on, or materially affect, an individual’s rights, opportunities, or eligibility based solely on the AI Features or their output, and you must apply appropriate human review. Such matters include, without limitation, determinations concerning personal identity, access control or attendance; employment, education, credit, insurance, healthcare, legal or financial decisions; law enforcement; or public services.

1.3 QNAP will use reasonable efforts to provide the AI Features. However, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the AI Features and their output are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis, and QNAP makes no warranties of any kind in this regard, whether express or implied.

1.4 QNAP will provide information on the capabilities, limitations, and appropriate use of the AI Features in its product documentation and user instructions. If you deploy the AI Features on behalf of an organization, you must, as required by applicable law, ensure that personnel who actually operate the AI Features have a level of AI literacy and skills commensurate with their roles and the context of use.

2. Ownership of Rights

2.1 Rights in Input Content. You must ensure that you have the necessary rights, authorizations, or lawful basis for processing any text, files, images, audio, video, personal data, or other content that you input, upload, connect, or otherwise provide to the AI Features, and that the related processing and use do not violate applicable law or infringe any third-party rights.

2.2 Ownership of AI Output. As between you and QNAP, and except for QNAP’s reservation of all rights in its own technology, models, and software, QNAP claims no ownership interest in content generated from your input. Due to the nature of AI technology, output may not be original, may be similar to output produced for other users, or may contain content protected by third-party intellectual property rights. Before using, reproducing, distributing, or publishing any output, you should confirm its legality and obtain any necessary rights or licenses.

3. Restrictions on Use of the AI Features

3.1 You must use the AI Features only for lawful and legitimate purposes and comply with the laws, regulations, orders, and regulatory requirements applicable in your jurisdiction and context of use. You also must not use the AI Features for any other artificial intelligence practices prohibited by applicable law or for any use case identified as excluded in QNAP’s product documentation or user instructions.

3.2 You must not use the AI Features for any of the following purposes:

3.2.1 real-time remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces;

3.2.2 emotion recognition in the workplace or in educational institutions;

3.2.3 inferring or categorizing a natural person’s race, political opinions, trade union membership, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, or sexual orientation from biometric data, or conducting biometric categorization based on other sensitive personal characteristics in a manner that may lead to discrimination;

3.2.4 social scoring;

3.2.5 the untargeted or large-scale collection or scraping of facial images in order to build or expand a biometric identification database, except where expressly permitted by law;

3.2.6 using subliminal, manipulative, or deceptive techniques to materially distort a person’s behavior, or exploiting vulnerabilities arising from age, disability, or a specific social or economic situation in order to distort behavior, where such use causes or is reasonably likely to cause significant harm; or

3.2.7 assessing or predicting the risk that a natural person will commit a criminal offense based solely on profiling or personality traits.

3.3 With respect to any AI Feature, you must not use it to:

3.3.1 create, without the consent of the person concerned, synthetic content depicting another person’s image, voice, or identity in a manner likely to mislead others into believing it is genuine;

3.3.2 circumvent the safety or content-protection mechanisms of the AI Features;

3.3.3 pass off AI output as human-created in a manner that violates applicable disclosure or labeling obligations; or

3.3.4 create or disseminate non-consensual intimate or sexualized imagery of any person, or child sexual exploitation or abuse material.

3.4 The intended purpose of the AI Features is to use artificial intelligence technologies within QNAP product environments to assist you in searching, classifying, recognizing, analyzing, summarizing, generating, or managing data selected by you. The specific intended purpose, input and output types, intended users, restrictions on use, and known limitations of each AI Feature are as stated in these Terms and the applicable product documentation and user instructions. QNAP has not designed, tested, validated, or provided the AI Features for the purposes or conduct listed in Sections 3.2 and 3.3. If you intend to deploy biometric recognition features in potentially high-risk use cases, such as access control, attendance management, or retail identity recognition, you must use such features in accordance with applicable law and implement appropriate safeguards, including, without limitation, completing relevant impact assessments, establishing appropriate human-oversight mechanisms, and providing necessary notices to end users.

3.5 If you place the AI Features on the market or put them into service under your own name or trademark, modify their intended purpose, or make a substantial modification to them, you may be deemed the provider of the resulting AI system under applicable law and in which case you shall be solely responsible for all obligations applicable to a provider. If you integrate or modify the AI Features, or use them outside their intended purpose, you must independently assess the legality of such use and the obligations you must fulfill. If, under applicable law, such conduct causes you to be regarded as another regulated operator of an AI system, you must fulfill the obligations arising from that status.

4. AI Services and Data Processing

4.1 The AI Features may be provided in the following different ways, with corresponding differences in where data is processed and where responsibility lies:

4.1.1 On-device / local processing. Certain AI Features are designed to run on your mobile device or NAS and fall into the following two categories:

a. AI Features provided by QNAP: the image recognition, facial recognition, object recognition, smart surveillance, generative AI, conversational AI, and other artificial intelligence features that QNAP provides in its products and services and that, by design, run on the NAS.
b. Third-party on-device AI: Certain AI Features may be provided through third-party artificial intelligence models or services built into or supported by the device you use, such as on-device AI models provided by the mobile operating system or device manufacturer. The operation, data processing, and any data transmission of such software are determined by the relevant third parties in accordance with their own designs and policies, are beyond QNAP’s control, and QNAP makes no warranties in this regard. When you use such third-party software, your related rights and obligations and the processing of your data are governed by the relevant companies’ terms of use and privacy policies.

4.1.2 Third-party cloud services. If you choose to connect to or configure an external AI service or third-party AI model, such as a third-party AI service connected via an API key, then, in order to provide the relevant service, the content, prompts, files, images, audio, or other data you input may be transmitted to that third-party service environment for processing as required by the feature. Such transmission occurs only when you actively enable the relevant feature.

4.1.3 Models you deploy yourself. For any open-source or third-party AI model, service, or platform that you deploy, install, connect, or use, the relevant data is processed within your own hardware environment, and you are responsible for the related legal and regulatory compliance.

4.2 When you use a third-party model or service, you may, in addition to these Terms, be bound by that third party’s terms of use, privacy policy, license terms, data-processing rules, or other applicable terms. Before enabling the relevant model or service, you must independently review and confirm your acceptance of, and comply with, those third-party terms, and independently assess the related risks concerning the service, data processing, and legal and regulatory compliance. Relevant data will be processed in accordance with the third party’s terms and policies. QNAP makes no warranties regarding the operation, data processing, or legal and regulatory compliance of any such third party.

5. Transparency

5.1 For conversational AI Features provided by QNAP, QNAP will inform users by appropriate means that they are interacting with an AI system, unless this is obvious from the circumstances of use.

5.2 For image, audio, video, or text output generated by generative AI Features provided by QNAP, QNAP will, as required by applicable law, mark such output in a machine-readable format indicating that it has been artificially generated or manipulated.

5.3 If you use AI Features that perform emotion recognition or biometric categorization, you must inform the individuals subject to such processing as required by applicable law and process their personal data in accordance with applicable data protection law.

5.4 If you use the AI Features to produce image, audio, or video content constituting a deep fake, you must disclose that the content has been artificially generated or manipulated as required by applicable law.

6. Changes to These Terms

QNAP may amend these Terms at any time. If a material change is involved, QNAP will notify users by website announcement, in-product notice, or other appropriate means, and will obtain your renewed consent where required by applicable law. For material changes affecting your rights or obligations, QNAP will provide reasonable advance notice. If you do not agree to the amended Terms, you may stop using the AI Features. If you continue to use the AI Features after the Terms are updated, you will be deemed to have agreed to the amended Terms.