PARTLY

As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly draft terms and conditions for your UK online shop.

This still needs a person who signs their name to it.

Can you do it?

15 minutesto a draft.

1 hourto something you’d act on.

Cost, all in£0

Skill neededchat-fluent

Who has to check ita professional

What the alternative costsGenie AI is a UK-focused AI legal assistant for drafting and reviewing everyday contracts.

If this goes wrong: a customer dispute or regulator challenge exposes an unlawful term, and your business has to deal with the resulting loss or legal work.

What to actually do

  1. Hand it to a person

    The route this page recommends

    Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

  2. Use a tool built for this

    Second choice

  3. Do it yourself

    The distant third

    A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

    How to actually do it

    1. Open your current product, pricing, delivery, returns and complaints pages, then gather the shop name, business address, contact details and payment methods.
    2. Write down whether you sell physical goods, digital content, services, subscriptions, age-restricted products or to business customers as well as consumers.
    3. Paste the gathered information into the prompt and ask a chatbot to produce the draft, marking every missing fact instead of filling it in.
    4. Compare the draft's business details, delivery promises, cancellation process, refund process and contact information against your live shop pages and amend any mismatch.
    5. Check the sections on consumer rights, faulty goods, cancellations, refunds and liability against current GOV.UK guidance, without treating that check as a legal review.
    6. Send the draft and the chatbot's list of flagged clauses to a UK solicitor for review if the shop has unusual products, subscriptions, digital content, significant sales or any dispute risk.
    7. Publish the approved terms where customers can read them before ordering, keep a dated copy of the version used, and update the terms when your products or processes change.

    Prompt

    Draft terms and conditions for a UK online shop using the information below.

Shop name: [SHOP NAME]
Business structure and registered address: [DETAILS]
What I sell: [PRODUCTS OR SERVICES]
How customers place orders: [PROCESS]
Prices and payment methods: [DETAILS]
Delivery areas, charges and times: [DETAILS]
Returns, cancellations and refunds process: [DETAILS]
Digital content or services, if any: [DETAILS]
Subscriptions or recurring payments, if any: [DETAILS]
Age restrictions, if any: [DETAILS]
Customer support contact details: [DETAILS]
Any marketplace, trade, wholesale or business-customer sales: [DETAILS]
Any other shop rules: [DETAILS]

Write clear UK English suitable for customers. Cover contract formation, product descriptions, prices, payment, delivery, risk, cancellations, statutory consumer rights, faulty goods, refunds, complaints, website use, intellectual property, liability, privacy cross-references, changes to the terms and governing law. Do not invent business facts, legal requirements, dates, fees or rights. Where information is missing, insert [NEEDS BUSINESS DETAIL] and explain what is needed. Distinguish statutory rights from optional shop policies. Do not claim that a term is enforceable unless that has been checked against current UK law. After the draft, provide a table listing every factual assumption, every missing decision and every clause that needs review by a UK solicitor before publication. This is a drafting aid, not professional advice.

    Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

What it gets wrong

What caps this at PARTLY: legal accountability, regulated advice and verification cost.

How we scored this

Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.

AxisScore (0–2)
Output2
Inputs1
Verification1
Liability0
Effort delta2
Total6 / 10

The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.

FAQ

Can ChatGPT write terms and conditions for my online shop?
Yes, it can produce a useful first draft from your shop details and policies. It cannot confirm that the wording complies with UK consumer law or will be enforceable, so a serious or unusual shop needs a UK solicitor to check it.
Do I need a solicitor for online shop terms and conditions?
Not every straightforward shop needs a solicitor to create a first draft, but AI does not carry the legal risk. A UK solicitor should review terms for subscriptions, digital content, age-restricted products, business customers, unusual delivery arrangements or a live dispute.
What should UK ecommerce terms and conditions include?
They normally explain how orders become contracts, pricing, payment, delivery, cancellations, returns, refunds, faulty goods, complaints, website use, liability and governing law. The exact contents depend on what you sell and how your shop operates, so do not copy clauses without checking them against your current process.
Can I use AI-generated terms and conditions on my website?
You can use AI to prepare a draft, but check every business fact against your live shop and current GOV.UK guidance before publication. This is not professional advice, and a UK solicitor should review terms where the consequences of an error could be serious.

Nearby answers

All Terms & policies rulings

Assessed by gpt-5.6-luna (gpt-5.6-luna) on 2026-08-13, second-checked by an independent model. Wrong somewhere? Email [email protected] and it gets re-checked.

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