QChat Terms and Conditions of use

Introduction

These QChat Terms and Conditions of Use (“Terms”) describe your rights and responsibilities as a user of the general-purpose Queensland Government virtual assistant named QChat (“QChat”).

These Terms are an agreement between you and the State of Queensland represented by the Queensland Government Customer and Digital Group (part of the Department of Customer Services, Open Data and Small and Family Business) (also referred to as “we”, “us”, “our”).

Authorised Access

QChat is designed solely for access and use by Authorised Users.

Term definitions

"Agency"

Means: (a) a department; (b) a body corporate or an unincorporated body established or constituted for a public purpose by the State of Queensland legislation, or an instrument made under that legislation (including a local authority); (c) a body established by the State of Queensland through the Governor or a Minister; or (d) an incorporated or unincorporated body over which the State of Queensland exercises control.

"Authorised user"

Means an Eligible User who is granted permission through Microsoft Entra ID to access and use QChat, by an Agency under an agreement with us.

"Digital identity"

Means a digital identity created through Microsoft Entra ID or another Microsoft Cloud Service.

"Eligible user"

Means a natural person with a Digital Identity in a qld.gov.au domain who is:

• an employee, officer or agent of an Agency
• a contractor working under the direction or control of an Agency
• approved by us as eligible to access and use QChat.

"Your agency"

Means the Agency that grants you permission through Microsoft Entra ID to access and use QChat.

Prior to using QChat you must complete all required onboarding processes directed by Your Agency allowing you to access and use Your Agency’s internal systems and other digital products.

You must not access or use QChat unless you are an Authorised User.

Acceptance of Terms

By using QChat, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not proceed to use QChat.

Description of QChat

QChat is a general-purpose virtual assistant powered by generative artificial intelligence technology. QChat is designed to help you with common day-to-day tasks you may conduct in the course of your official duties for Your Agency.

We may change, add or remove functions or other aspects of QChat at any time.

Availability of QChat

We will make reasonable efforts to have QChat available between 8:30am–5:00pm on Brisbane, Queensland business days.

QChat is accessed by the Internet. Your Agency is responsible for providing and maintaining hardware, software, internet access and other services needed to access QChat.

We may temporarily suspend QChat for:

• maintenance
• upgrades
• preventing a security incident or
• misuse
• investigation

To prevent a breach of these Terms or the law or for any other reasonable purpose.

Authentication

Your Digital Identity needs to have the required permissions for you to access QChat.

Your Agency is responsible for managing your Digital Identity (including password and multi-factor authentication policies relating to your Digital Identity).  We use that Digital Identity to authenticate and authorise you for the purpose of accessing QChat.

We accept no responsibility with respect to Your Agency’s services regarding your Digital Identity and other aspects of organisational identity management to access QChat.

Use of QChat

Purpose of Use

You must only use QChat to perform your official work duties as part of your employment or engagement with Your Agency.  You must not use QChat for any other purpose.

Compliance with law and policy

You must comply with the following respective to your access level and use of QChat:

• These Terms.
• Any acceptable use policy or other policy applying to the use of QChat published or notified to you by us.
• Any policy, standard or guideline issued by Your Agency or the Queensland Government.
• The law.

(collectively, "Use Regulations")

Conversations with QChat

You may:

• provide text, documents, code, images, audio, video, files or other data (Data) to QChat (Input)
• receive Data output from QChat in response to or based on the Input (Output),

(collectively, “Conversations”)

You are responsible for all Conversations you have with QChat, including Inputs and any subsequent use or reuse of any Outputs.

You must ensure that you have all necessary rights and consents to provide any Inputs to QChat, and for QChat to process those Inputs and generate Outputs based on or incorporating the Inputs.

You must set an information security classification label (“Security Label”) against every Conversation that you have with QChat, and ensure that your Input conforms to that label. You must not provide any Input classified as PROTECTED or above.

Prohibited use

You must not:

• use QChat to make or perform any decision or action which must under any law be made or performed by a human;
• provide Input, generate Output or use QChat in any other way, or for any activity that does or could reasonably be  considered to:
  • contravene any law
  • breach any contract, including your contract of employment or engagement with Your Agency
  • breach any obligation or duty of confidentiality
  • interfere with the privacy of any person
  • violate any rights of others, including human rights
  • exploit, abuse, defame, harass or bully others
  • create or disseminate malicious or harmful software
  • be fraudulent, deceptive or misleading, unethical or harmful to the interests or reputation of the Queensland Government
  • to the extent not already covered above, inflict harm on individuals, groups or society.
• disclose personal information to QChat unless any subject of that information (including you) has provided any necessary consent to do so
• cause QChat to generate any Output or use, disclose or copy any Output if you know or reasonably suspect that the Output involves an unauthorised exercise of intellectual property rights or breach of moral rights
• share Output that is discriminatory, harmful, inappropriate, violent, offensive, or that constitutes spam
• enable the automatic extraction of data from QChat
• allow any other person to use QChat (unless you are an administrator whose role is to authorise access, in which case you may authorise access in accordance with Your Agency’s agreement with us about QChat).

Feedback and support

If you encounter any issues relating to Output, or if you consider that any Output contains harmful, illegal or unethical content, you will report this issue through the inbuilt feedback mechanism provided by QChat. If you believe a serious issue has occurred, support should be contacted directly by emailing help@ai.qld.gov.au.

You may also issue support requests to Your Agency’s nominated support representative.

Data Management

Legal and policy obligations

Your Agency retains all obligations for Data that is collected by QChat in the provision of QChat to you. This includes but is not limited to obligations under the Right to Information Act 2009, Information Privacy Act 2009 and Public Records Act 2002. We provide QChat to Your Agency as a service provider only.

Storage and retention

You acknowledge that QChat collects and stores Conversations, feedback provided by users through the inbuilt feedback mechanisms of QChat, and user personal information related to your Digital Identity that is used to authenticate you and provide access to QChat.

Each document, audio file or other file (Source File) that you upload to QChat may be used to augment your Inputs, and the Source File will be deleted at the end of your Conversation. QChat will index the Source File by creating a copy of the Source File (or parts of it or content extracted or converted from it) (Context) and associated numerical representations (Embeddings) of the Context in a database (Semantic Index) for the purposes of providing the Context to QChat when generating responses to you as part of a Conversation. The Context and Embeddings will be deleted from the Semantic Index at the end of the Conversation.

Otherwise, all Conversations are retained for a minimum of 6 months. After that time, and subject to any obligations we have to retain the Conversations, you acknowledge that Conversations may be deleted and you will not be able to obtain a copy of them.

If you use QChat for the purposes of creating content that could be considered to have ongoing business or legal value (such as drafting or developing work product), or as instructed by Your Agency, you must keep a record of your Conversation with QChat to ensure the content and record is complete and reliable.

Your Agency is responsible for retaining backup copies of Conversations.  We do not guarantee that any Conversations will not be lost or rendered unavailable or unusable.

Our use of Your Data

We will collect, use and disclose your personal information in accordance with our Privacy Policy set out at https://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/Help/Privacy.

To authenticate and authorise your access to QChat, we need to collect certain personal information from your Digital Identity provided by Your Agency. From your Digital Identity, we collect:

• Your name
• Your email address
• Details of Your Agency.

We may collect, use, disclose or handle information in Conversations and other data created or generated in connection with your use of QChat (Your data) and exercise intellectual property rights in Your Data to:

• conduct activities related to the provision, operation and maintenance of QChat
• provide summary reporting statistics, insights and analysis relating to your use of QChat to Your Agency
• generate, use and disclose de-identified statistical insights, analysis and reporting
• improve or enhance QChat (or other Queensland Government systems) including the safety, reliability, accuracy, security, availability, performance or alignment of QChat (or other Queensland Government systems), or the personalisation or customisation of QChat (or other Queensland Government systems).

Your Data may also be used and disclosed by us or Your Agency to conduct authorised and lawful compliance activities (such as a responding to a Right To Information request) in accordance with existing organisational policies and procedures relating to such activities.

No reliance or warranties

QChat is designed as a tool to assist you to perform your functions for Your Agency more efficiently and effectively.  QChat does not avoid the need to exercise human reasoning, skill, judgement or decision making or research or verify information using reliable sources.  It does not provide information that can be relied on and you must not rely on it.

You acknowledge that Outputs:

• may be inaccurate, misleading, incomplete, out of date, defamatory, biased, discriminatory, illegal, offensive or unsuitable for any particular purpose
• are provided in real time and not reviewed by anyone before being provided to you.

You must review any Outputs before using or disclosing them.

We make no representation or warranty that the use of QChat or any Output will not infringe intellectual property rights or moral rights or breach any obligations of confidentiality or privacy.

Except as expressly set out in these Terms, to the extent permitted by law, we make no representation, guarantee or warranty in respect of QChat or any Output.

Liability

Subject to the following paragraph, our liability for breach of these Terms, or in tort (including negligence) or for any other common law or statutory cause of action in connection with your use of QChat:

• excludes any loss or damage which is:
  • incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, punitive or indirect
  • loss of revenue, profits, anticipated savings, production, goodwill, credit, reputation, interest, opportunity
  • caused by any loss or corruption of Data or which otherwise relates to Data
  • not a natural or immediate consequence of a breach
  • a result of a claim by a third party.
• is limited to $100.

This clause does not limit or exclude any rights that an Authorised User would otherwise have but for this clause under, or in connection with, a contract of employment or engagement with the State of Queensland.

To the extent permitted by law, any term, condition or warranty which would otherwise be implied into these Terms is excluded.  Where a consumer guarantee or term implied by law cannot be excluded, our aggregate liability for any breach of the guarantee or term is limited at its option to supplying the services again or paying the cost of having the services supplied again.

Changes to these Terms

We may change these Terms at any time. You will be advised of any changes to the Terms on login and access to QChat. Your ongoing use of QChat constitutes your acceptance of any new or changed Terms.

Your Agency’s Terms

Your Agency may require you to accept and comply with separate or additional terms specific to Your Agency in relation to your use of QChat (Agency Terms).  You acknowledge that any Agency Terms will not detract from or relieve you from any obligations under these Terms.

Suspension or termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to QChat for non-compliance with any Use Regulation.  You must immediately cease to use QChat where you cease to be an Authorised User.  We may terminate your access to QChat where Your Agency does not have a current agreement with us governing your access to QChat.

Severance

If any of these Terms are held to be invalid, unenforceable or illegal for any reason, the remaining Terms will continue in full force.

Governing law

These Terms shall be governed by, and interpreted in, accordance with the laws and courts of the State of Queensland, and you agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Queensland.

Waiver

None of these Terms will be taken to be waived except by written waiver executed between us and yourself.

Help

For further information on these Terms, email the Queensland Government AI unit at help@ai.qld.gov.au.

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