ai · Runway
You’re creating on Runway, which means…
Runway doesn’t claim to own anything you make, and says so twice. What it takes instead is a permanent, irrevocable right to train its models on everything you type in and everything it hands back — unless your organisation bought the enterprise plan, where the same company promises the opposite.
Runway gives you a different contract depending on where you are. This page reads all 2; every clause below says which one it comes from.
What they own
Nothing you make. Section 4.2 says “Company does not claim ownership of Your Content”, and 4.4 says it again for the AI: “The Company does not claim ownership of any of your Inputs or Outputs.” What Runway does own is the Services — and your account, which under 2.3 is one you “shall have no ownership or other property interest in”.
What you own
Whatever you owned before you logged in. Nothing in the Terms of Use vests anything in you — the phrase “you own” appears twice in the document, once about the computer you install the app on and once inside a warranty you give Runway. Your ownership rests on Runway declining to claim it, not on any grant. What is written affirmatively is narrower: “the Company does not restrict your commercial use of your Outputs”, a sentence that opens “Subject to your compliance with the Agreement” — so the permission to sell travels with your good standing, not with the copyright.
What you don’t
Any say over training. Section 4.4 puts it in the contract you accept: “Inputs and Outputs may be used by the Company to train and improve its AI models,” and the licence you grant back is “irrevocable, perpetual” and reaches your work “at any point.” There is no data setting to turn off — the phrase “opt out” appears nine times in the Terms of Use and every one of them is about arbitration. Deleting doesn’t undo it either: anything you made available in a “public” area “may be retained in perpetuity.”
What they can do with it
Host it, license it, reproduce it, modify it, adapt it, perform and display it “including on a through-to-the-audience basis,” and sub-license all of that onward. Separately, use your Inputs and Outputs for “labeling, classification, content moderation and model training purposes”. You are barred from doing the reverse: you may not use Outputs “to create, train, develop, or improve similar or competitive products or services.”
The clauses
They don’t own it. They train on it anyway.
Runway Terms of Use — Section 4.4, User Inputs and Outputs. Last updated May 11, 2026. ↗
The Company does not claim ownership of any of your Inputs or Outputs. Subject to your compliance with the Agreement, the Company does not restrict your commercial use of your Outputs. You acknowledge that Inputs and Outputs may be used by the Company to train and improve its AI models, algorithms and related technology, products and services (including for labeling, classification, content moderation and model training purposes). As such, you hereby grant to the Company a non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid, transferable, sublicensable right and license to use any Inputs and Outputs Made Available by you or otherwise generated in connection with your use of the Services at any point, in connection with the purposes described above.
Two directions, four sentences
The first half runs toward you: no ownership claimed, no restriction on selling your Outputs. Then the hinge — “As such, you hereby grant” — and the rest runs the other way. Read whole, the clause gives up ownership and takes the training right.
Written into the contract
Many AI platforms leave training to a privacy policy you never accepted. Runway states it in the terms you click through: Inputs and Outputs “may be used by the Company to train and improve its AI models”.
You don’t have to publish it
The licence covers Inputs and Outputs “Made Available by you or otherwise generated in connection with your use of the Services”. A generation you never posted, never shared and deleted at once is still inside the grant.
There is no off switch
The phrase “opt out” appears nine times in the Terms of Use — eight of them in Section 16, and one in the all-caps preamble, “UNLESS YOU OPT OUT OF THE ARBITRATION AGREEMENT”. All nine are about arbitration. Nothing in this document offers a way to decline the training use.
The content licence is a separate grant, and it has no end date
Runway Terms of Use — Section 4.3, License to Your Content ↗
Subject to any applicable account settings that you select, you grant Company a fully paid, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right (including any moral rights) and license to host, use, license, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform, and publicly display, including on a through-to-the-audience basis, Your Content (in whole or in part) for the purposes of operating and providing the Services to you and to our other users. Please remember that other users may search for, see, use, modify and reproduce any of Your Content that you submit to any “public” area of the Services.
Two grants, not one
4.3 covers Your Content — everything you upload or make available. 4.4 covers Inputs and Outputs on its own separate terms. They sit in adjacent paragraphs and each has to be read on its own.
Including any moral rights
Moral rights are the right to be named as the author and to object to changes that distort your work. This licence reaches them, and Section 4.2 goes further: you warrant that the rights holder “has completely and effectively waived all such rights”.
Through-to-the-audience
A licensing term meaning the right runs the whole length of the distribution chain to whoever finally watches it, without anyone in between needing to clear it again.
The only brake, and who sets it
“Subject to any applicable account settings that you select” is the sole limit in the sentence. Section 3.3 adds what happens if you never look: “If you do not choose, the system may default to its most permissive setting.”
They may train on your work. You may not train on theirs.
Runway Terms of Use — Section 5, User Conduct ↗
You shall not (and shall not permit any third party to) either (a) take any action or (b) Make Available any Content on or through the Services that: … (viii) directly or indirectly uses the Services (including, but not limited to, Outputs) to create, train, develop, or improve similar or competitive products or services.
The asymmetry, counted
The word “train” appears twice in the Terms of Use and “training” once. Two of the three sit in Section 4.4, describing what Runway may do with your work. The third is here, describing what you may not do with Runway’s.
Outputs are named in it
The prohibited object is “the Services (including, but not limited to, Outputs)” — the file you generated is written into the restriction alongside the platform it came from. Whether it outlives your account the document does not settle: 14.3 carries over “All provisions of the Agreement which by their nature should survive”, and the only examples it names are “warranty disclaimers and limitation of liability”.
Leaving deletes your copy and may keep theirs
Runway Terms of Use — Section 14.3, Effect of Termination ↗
Termination of all Services may also include deletion of your password and all related information, files and Content associated with or inside your Account (or any part thereof), including Your Content; provided that , any of Your Content that you previously Made Available in any “public” areas of the Service may be retained in perpetuity. … Company will not have any liability whatsoever to you for any suspension or termination, including for deletion of Your Content.
Both outcomes, one paragraph
Termination may wipe everything inside your account, and may keep forever anything you ever posted publicly. The clause promises neither deletion nor retention — it reserves both.
And no recourse for either
The same paragraph removes liability for whichever happens: for deleting work you wanted, or for keeping work you wanted gone.
The enterprise contract promises the opposite
Runway will use Customer Content, and provide necessary access to third party service providers acting on Runway’s behalf, such as Runway’s hosting Services provider, only: (a) to provide, maintain, and optimize the Services for Customer; (b) to prevent or address Services or technical problems or at Customer's request in connection with support matters; (c) as compelled by law; or (d) to enforce this Agreement. Runway may not use Customer Content as training data for the Services. Subject to the limited licenses granted herein, Runway acquires no right, title or interest under this Agreement in or to any Customer Content. As between the parties, Customer owns all rights, title, and interest in Customer Content.
One sentence reverses the other document
The Enterprise Terms define Customer Content as “all files including images, pictures, videos, and audio-visual content uploaded by Authorized Users into the Services” — the Inputs — “and the Customer-specific output that is generated by Authorized Users’ use of the Services” — the Outputs. So “Runway may not use Customer Content as training data for the Services” refuses the exact thing Section 4.4 of the Terms of Use grants: the same two defined terms, the same data, the same company. Which contract binds you depends on whether an organisation bought an Enterprise plan.
Who is on which side of it
The Enterprise Terms apply to “organizations purchasing a subscription to Runway Enterprise Services.” The document says that if you are “an individual not acting on behalf of an organization, or on an organizational plan that is not an Enterprise Services Plan,” the consumer Terms of Use govern you instead.
The use list is closed
The four permitted uses are introduced by “only,” and they are operational: provide the Services, fix problems, comply with law, enforce the agreement. Nothing about improving models or developing new products, which are the words that carry training in the consumer terms.
The one permanent grant that survives
“Perpetual” and “irrevocable” appear once each in the Enterprise Terms, in the same sentence, and neither is about your videos: “Customer grants Runway an unlimited, irrevocable, perpetual, sublicensable, royalty-free license to use any such feedback or suggestions for any purpose without any obligation or compensation to Customer or any Authorized User.” Suggestions are the thing you hand over for good.
Two sentences that disagree about who owns your avatar
Runway Terms of Use — Sections 3.1 and 4.1, Types of Content; The Services ↗
You may also access digital avatars as part of the Services, including those created by Company and made generally available to you (“ Stock Avatars ”) and those created specifically by, for, or at the direction of you (“ Custom Avatars ”). For clarity, Your Content includes Custom Avatars but does not include the Services themselves or Stock Avatars. … Except with respect to Your Content and User Content, you agree that Company and its suppliers own all rights, title and interest in the Services and the Custom Avatars.
The contradiction
Section 3.1 places Custom Avatars inside Your Content. Section 4.1 names them among the things the Company owns — in a sentence that begins by carving Your Content out. Both are in the same document, under the same date.
What is at stake
A Custom Avatar is one “created specifically by, for, or at the direction of you” — the digital figure built to your brief, likely with a real person’s face and body behind it. Which of the two sentences governs decides who owns it.
The clearances are yours either way
Section 3.1 requires you to “maintain at all times all rights, licenses, and permissions needed to provide Your Content to and through the Services”. Ownership is contested; responsibility is not.
The 2 agreements
Due Dilly reads the paperwork and reports what it says. This is not legal advice.