VidMage terms run to 6,107 words, the privacy policy adds another 3,584, and every one of those 9,691 words is in English. That would be unremarkable for an English-language product. VidMage is not one. Its face swap tools ship in twenty-five languages, and the sitemap proves the localisation was deliberate, funded and thorough.
The VidMage terms are not a bad translation. They are an untranslated one. This is a story about which parts of a face swap product a vendor chooses to translate, and which parts it leaves behind. The tools travel. The VidMage terms do not.
We pulled vidmage.ai/sitemap.xml on 8 September 2026, fetched the legal and marketing pages in every locale the site publishes, and measured the difference. The catalogue holds 1,291 URLs: 48 product paths reproduced across 25 language versions, plus 91 pages that exist only in English. The privacy policy and the VidMage terms of service are both in that second group.
The measurement that settles it is blunt. Request the privacy policy in any of the 24 non-English locales and the page returns HTTP 200 with <html lang="de"> or <html lang="ja"> in the markup — and an English body underneath. In 24 out of 24 locales, the page title comes back as “Privacy Policy | VidMage”. Request the video face swap page in those same 24 locales and the English title appears zero times.
To be fair to the vendor, and this matters: the short consent line on the upload button is translated, in every language we checked. A German user is told, in German, that they are confirming consent and usage rights. What they are not told in German is what VidMage terms mean by consent, what happens when they get it wrong, or which court hears the argument.
Table of contents
- What the VidMage Catalogue Actually Contains
- How the VidMage Terms Were Measured
- The Consent Line Travels. The VidMage Terms Do Not
- What the English-Only VidMage Terms Ask of You
- Three Errors Inside the VidMage Terms
- The Privacy Policy That Disclaims Every Privacy Law
- Forty Soft 404s Across Eight Languages
- What the VidMage Terms Mean for Client Work
- Where the VidMage Terms Leave Real Gaps
- Frequently Asked Questions About VidMage Terms
- References
What the VidMage Catalogue Actually Contains
Before the legal question, the shape of the product. The sitemap is unusually informative here because it is written for crawlers rather than customers.
1,291 URLs across 25 language versions
The file lists 1,291 URLs. Strip the locale prefix from each and 187 unique paths remain. Of those, exactly 48 appear in every language: English plus Arabic, Danish, German, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
Twenty-four non-English locales at 48 pages each gives 1,152 URLs. Add the 139 English entries and the total reconciles exactly.
The 48 tools that travel
The localised 48 are the product itself. Thirteen are face swap variants — photo, video, multi-face photo, multi-face video, batch, GIF, face morph, facial feature swap, gender swap, head swap, meme, Mac and “unlimited”. The rest cover video generation, upscaling, watermark removal, lip sync, voice cloning and image generation. /pricing is in the localised set too, which tells you the vendor localises whatever converts.
The 91 pages that never leave English, including the VidMage terms
Everything else stays put. The English-only group breaks down as 28 blog posts, 26 model pages, 16 use-case pages, 14 competitor comparison pages, and seven singles: about-us, affiliate-program, an author page, media-kit, testimonials — and the privacy policy and the VidMage terms.
| Page group | Paths | Languages | URLs generated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tools, homepage and pricing | 48 | 25 | 1,200 |
| Blog | 28 | 1 | 28 |
| Model pages | 26 | 1 | 26 |
| Use cases | 16 | 1 | 16 |
| Competitor comparisons | 14 | 1 | 14 |
| Privacy, terms and five others | 7 | 1 | 7 |
| Total | 139 | — | 1,291 |
There is a second signal in the timestamps. Of the 1,152 localised URLs, 744 carry a lastmod of 1 June 2026 and have not been touched since. The English face swap pages were refreshed on 8 August and the model pages on 30 August. The translated catalogue is a snapshot; the English one is maintained.
How the VidMage Terms Were Measured
Three tests decide whether the VidMage terms are translated, each cheap enough to repeat, and each pointing the same way. We ran them because a page returning HTTP 200 at a localised URL looks translated until you read it.
The title test
Fetch /{locale}/privacy and /{locale}/terms for all 24 non-English locales and read the <title> element. Every one returned the English string — “Privacy Policy | VidMage” or “Terms of Service | VidMage”. As a control, the same request against /{locale}/video-face-swap returned a translated title in all 24: “Kostenloser Video-Gesichtstausch online”, “無料動画フェイススワップオンライン”, “Бесплатная замена лица в видео онлайн”.
The script test
Titles could be an oversight. Body text cannot. For the nine locales written in a non-Latin script — Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Thai and both Chinese variants — we measured the share of alphabetic characters that were Latin.
A genuinely translated page scores low. A page serving English scores high. The tool page averaged 31.6% Latin. The privacy policy averaged 94.0% and the VidMage terms 96.3%, which is what you get from English prose with a translated navigation bar wrapped around it.
German gives the same answer from the other direction. Counting thirteen common German function words, /de/video-face-swap returns 203 hits across its body. /de/privacy returns 20 — the same count as VidMage’s own German 404 page, which is to say the navigation chrome and nothing else.
The hreflang test
The third test needs no reading at all. VidMage’s tool pages carry a complete set of 26 hreflang alternates plus a canonical tag, declaring the 25-language set to search engines exactly as Google’s guidance on localized versions describes. The privacy policy and the VidMage terms carry zero alternates and no canonical tag.
The vendor’s own machine-readable markup agrees with the finding. The tools are declared international. The VidMage terms are not declared at all.
The Consent Line Travels. The VidMage Terms Do Not
This is where the story gets more interesting than “a startup skipped its legal translations”, because the consent language is not entirely absent from the localised pages.
What the button says in four languages
Under every upload widget sits one sentence. In English: “By continuing, you confirm consent.” In German: “Mit der weiteren Nutzung bestätigen Sie Einwilligung und Nutzungsrechte.” In French: “En continuant, vous confirmez disposer du consentement et des droits d’utilisation.” In Japanese: “続行すると、同意と使用権を得ていることを確認したものとみなされます。”
Note that the translations are fuller than the original. German, French and Japanese users are told they are confirming consent and usage rights; English users are told only “consent”. Whoever commissioned the translations was paying attention.
The footer disclaimer is localised too. German readers get “Nutzer dürfen nur Bilder und Videos hochladen, die ihnen gehören oder für deren Nutzung sie eine ausdrückliche Erlaubnis haben.” That is a faithful rendering of the English.
What sits behind the word “Details”
So the promise is translated. The obligation is not. Next to that one-line confirmation is a link marked “Details”, and behind it are the 9,691 English words that define every term the sentence uses.
The gap is not stylistic. A user confirming “Einwilligung” in German has no German text explaining that VidMage terms require verifiable consent, that they alone carry the liability, or that a dispute is heard under Singapore arbitration rules.
| Signal | Tool page | Privacy and terms |
|---|---|---|
| Locales with a translated title | 24 of 24 | 0 of 24 |
| Latin-letter share, non-Latin scripts | 31.6% | 94.0–96.3% |
| German function words in body | 203 | 20 |
| hreflang alternates declared | 26 | 0 |
| Listed in sitemap.xml per locale | Yes | English only |
The asymmetry, stated plainly
One sentence of consent, translated 25 ways. Nine thousand six hundred and ninety-one words of contract, translated none. That ratio is the article.
What the English-Only VidMage Terms Ask of You
It is worth reading what those 9,691 words actually contain, because the VidMage terms are not boilerplate. They are specific, and several clauses shift real risk onto the person clicking the button.
What the VidMage terms mean by verifiable consent
The section headed “Responsibility for Third-Party Content and Likeness” makes the user “solely and fully responsible” for “obtaining all necessary rights, licenses, permissions, and verifiable consents from such third parties before using their information”.
Verifiable is doing heavy lifting, and the VidMage terms never define it. A signed release verifies consent. A friend saying yes over coffee does not, at least not in a way you could produce later. The VidMage terms set the standard and leave the evidence entirely to you.
Five categories of prohibited content
The enforcement section lists what you may not create: sexually explicit material; non-consensual intimate images, explicitly including AI-generated nude content depicting a real person; deepfakes made for harassment, defamation or sexual gratification; child sexual abuse material; and content violating publicity or intellectual property rights, “including unauthorized use of celebrity or movie character likenesses”.
This is a serious list, and the VidMage terms draft it properly. It is also, for a Thai or Vietnamese or Korean user of a Thai or Vietnamese or Korean product page, unreadable.
The indemnity, and the card-network clause
Two clauses deserve attention. First, the user agrees to “indemnify, defend, and hold harmless” VidMage against any claim arising from content that uses a third party’s likeness without consent.
Second, and less common in a consumer contract: if VidMage suffers “penalties imposed by payment networks, card brands or payment processors (including Visa, Mastercard or Stripe)” because of your violation, you agree to reimburse it. Face swap vendors get fined by card networks when their platforms are used for abuse. This clause passes that cost down.
Where a dispute is heard
The VidMage terms send disputes to arbitration before the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, seated in Singapore. United States users get a substitution: California courts, American Arbitration Association rules, a class action waiver and a jury trial waiver in capitals. European Union consumers get their own court of residence, which is the correct answer under EU law.
All three routes are described only in English.
Three Errors Inside the VidMage Terms
Reading the VidMage terms this closely turns up mistakes. Three are worth naming, because each one weakens a protection the VidMage terms appear to offer.
A consumer remedy that closed in July 2025
The European Union section tells consumers they “can also file a complaint at the online platform for alternative dispute resolution (ODR-platform)” and gives the address https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.
That platform no longer exists. Follow the link and it redirects to a European Commission notice stating that the ODR platform “is discontinued as of 20 July 2025, following the adoption of the Regulation – EU – 2024/3228”. As of today the named remedy has been closed for more than thirteen months, and the VidMage terms still point at it. The Commission now directs consumers to a list of national dispute resolution bodies instead.
Two deletion windows, twelve hours apart
Section 6.1 of the privacy policy states that for web-based services “all uploaded and processed files are automatically deleted from our servers within 2 hours“.
Section 6.2, on the same page, states that “no identifiable user content is stored beyond the 24-hour deletion window“. Both sentences sit inside the VidMage terms and describe the same web service. They are twelve times apart, and there is no way to tell from the document which is the operative commitment.
A directive cited by the wrong number
The EU dispute clause invokes “the EU Direction 83/2011/EU”. The instrument it means is the Consumer Rights Directive, which is 2011/83/EU — the year comes first. The word “Direction” should read “Directive”. Neither error changes the legal effect, but both suggest the section was assembled rather than reviewed.
| Issue | Document says | Actually |
|---|---|---|
| EU consumer remedy | File at the ODR platform | Closed 20 July 2025 |
| Upload deletion window | 2 hours (§6.1) | 24 hours (§6.2) |
| Consumer rights instrument | Direction 83/2011/EU | Directive 2011/83/EU |
| Minimum age | 13, or 16 in some places (terms) | 16 (privacy §10) |
The Privacy Policy That Disclaims Every Privacy Law
The single most striking sentence in either document is in the privacy policy, and it is easy to miss because it sits under a heading most readers skip.
Singapore law, twenty-five markets, one set of VidMage terms
Section 12 establishes that the policy “comes into force, and will be enforced and interpreted under the laws of Singapore”. Then it adds: “We do not represent or warrant that this Policy complies with the privacy law of any jurisdiction. Therefore, you should not interpret this Policy in accordance with such law.“
That is a privacy policy declining to claim compliance with privacy law — any privacy law. Read alongside a product marketed in nine EU official languages, it is a remarkable thing to publish.
What it does to section 9
Section 9 lists rights that will look familiar to anyone who has read a GDPR notice: access, erasure, restriction, portability, objection to direct marketing, withdrawal of consent. It introduces them with “your local laws may permit you to request that we…”.
So the rights are framed as whatever your local law gives you, while section 12 says the document should not be read against your local law. A German or French reader would have to reconcile those two sections in a second language to work out what they are actually owed.
Forty Soft 404s Across Eight Languages
One more finding, smaller but revealing about how the localisation was built.
HTTP 200 with a 404 body
We requested five English-only informational pages — the blog, about-us, models, use-cases and testimonials — across eight locales. All forty requests returned HTTP 200. All forty served a page titled “404 – Page Not Found”.
This matters methodologically. A status-code check finds nothing wrong; only reading the body reveals it. It also matters for the vendor, since Google treats these as soft 404s and they waste crawl budget. Crucially, /de/privacy behaves differently: it serves real content, just not German content.
The blog that stays home
The 28-post blog is English-only and includes entries titled “How to Make a Deepfake Video” and “7 Best Deepfake Apps for Realistic Face Swap (2026)”. Whatever caution those posts contain travels no further than the product’s English readers, while the tool that produces the output reaches twenty-five language markets.
What the VidMage Terms Mean for Client Work
If you are evaluating this tool for a business, the language gap changes your risk calculation in three concrete ways. Our earlier review of VidMage’s pricing and its AIxploria listing covers the commercial side; this is the governance side.
The commercial-use clause inside the VidMage terms
The EU section states plainly that VidMage supplies the service “for domestic and private use”, and that for commercial or business use it accepts “no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity”.
If you are producing client work with it, that sentence applies to you, and it is in English regardless of where your team sits.
If your team does not read English
An operator in São Paulo or Bangkok reaches a fully translated interface, clicks a fully translated consent line, and is bound by an untranslated contract. Whether that is enforceable is a question for a lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction. Whether it is a sound basis for a workflow your business depends on is a question you can answer now.
What to write into your own policy
Do not rely on the click-through the VidMage terms provide. Record who granted permission for each face used, in what form, and where the evidence is kept. The VidMage terms demand verifiable consent without defining it, so define it yourself — a dated written release naming the intended use is the low bar.
Then decide the deletion question independently. With the policy stating both 2 hours and 24 hours, treat neither as a contractual guarantee, and keep client footage out of the web tool if the retention window matters. Our Trust and Security page sets out the questions we ask of any processor before client material reaches it, and more tool assessments sit in the AI models and tools hub.
Where the VidMage Terms Leave Real Gaps
Three things this audit of the VidMage terms could not establish, stated as limits rather than accusations.
What the app does, as opposed to the site
Everything above concerns the web product. VidMage also ships a Mac application that it says processes locally, and the privacy policy treats client-side applications separately, saying it retains nothing because the files never leave the device. We did not test the application.
Whether the localisation is machine or human
The translated pages read fluently and the consent line is rendered more completely than the English original, which suggests human review. We cannot confirm it.
Whether anything changed after 8 September 2026
All figures on the VidMage terms here are from that date. Sitemaps move; the model pages were updated as recently as 30 August. Re-run the title test before relying on these numbers — it takes one request per locale.
Frequently Asked Questions About VidMage Terms
Are the VidMage terms available in my language?
Only if your language is English. All 24 non-English locales serve the English VidMage terms and privacy policy under a localised URL, with the page’s lang attribute set to the local language and the body left untranslated.
Does VidMage translate anything about consent?
Yes. The one-line confirmation under the upload button and the footer disclaimer are both translated in every locale checked, and the translations are slightly fuller than the English. It is the 9,691-word contract behind them — the VidMage terms and the privacy policy — that is not.
How long does VidMage keep uploaded video?
The privacy policy gives two answers. Section 6.1 says files are deleted within 2 hours; section 6.2 refers to a 24-hour deletion window. Both describe the web service, so treat the longer figure as the safer planning assumption.
Which law governs VidMage terms?
The VidMage terms name Singapore, with substitutions for two regions: United States users go to California courts and AAA arbitration with a class action waiver, and EU consumers may use their own local court. The privacy policy separately disclaims compliance with the privacy law of any jurisdiction.
Is the EU dispute link in the VidMage terms still valid?
No. The VidMage terms direct EU consumers to the ODR platform, which the European Commission discontinued on 20 July 2025 under Regulation (EU) 2024/3228. The link now redirects to a closure notice.
Can I use VidMage for commercial client work?
The VidMage terms describe the service as supplied for domestic and private use and exclude liability for loss of profit or business from commercial use. That is a commercial decision rather than a prohibition, but it should be made knowingly.
References
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