The short answer
- Your own voice: generally fine.
- Someone else's voice, with their clear, informed and preferably written consent, for the uses they agreed to: generally fine.
- Telling your audience that voices are AI-generated: increasingly expected, and in some places required.
And the uses that put you on the wrong side of the law in many places:
- Using someone's voice commercially without their permission, such as in an advert.
- Impersonating a real person, or passing off generated audio as a real recording of them.
- Fraud and scams, including fake calls and fake endorsements.
- Harassment, defamation and non-consensual sexual content.
The kinds of law involved
Rights over your voice and likeness
Many US states recognize a "right of publicity": control over commercial use of your name, likeness and, often, voice. Courts applied it to voices long before AI. In Midler v. Ford (1988) and Waits v. Frito-Lay (1992), advertisers were held liable for using sound-alike singers in place of the real artists. Many other countries protect voice as part of personality rights or through privacy law.
Laws written for AI voices
Some places have passed laws aimed at AI voice clones directly. Tennessee's ELVIS Act (2024) added voice, including simulated voices, to the state's protection of likeness. California passed laws in 2024 on contracts for digital replicas of performers and on digital replicas of deceased personalities. Federal proposals in the US, such as the NO FAKES Act, have been debated; check their current status.
Disclosure rules
The EU AI Act requires that AI-generated or manipulated audio that could pass as real ("deep fakes") be disclosed as such, with lighter rules for clearly artistic, creative or satirical work, and these transparency obligations apply from August 2026. China requires labelling of AI-generated content. Platforms add their own rules on top: YouTube, TikTok and Steam, among others, ask creators to disclose synthetic content. See how to disclose AI voices.
Calls and fraud
In the US, the FCC ruled in 2024 that AI-generated voices in robocalls count as "artificial" voices under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, so such calls need the recipient's prior consent. Using a cloned voice to deceive someone for gain is fraud almost everywhere, whatever technology is used.
Data protection
Under laws such as the GDPR, a recording of someone's voice is personal data, and voice data used to identify a person can be biometric data with extra protection. If you hold recordings of other people, keep them secure, use them only for what they agreed to, and delete them when asked.
Copyright and contracts
A voice itself generally isn't protected by copyright, but recordings are, so the sample you clone from must be one you have the right to use. Whether AI-generated audio can be copyrighted is unsettled and varies by country; your script, and your human creative choices, are on firmer ground. Professional performers may be covered by union or agency agreements with specific rules on AI use, consent and payment, which you should follow.
Staying on the right side of it
- Clone only your own voice or a voice whose owner has agreed, and get that agreement in writing. See the consent template.
- Use it only for what they agreed to, for as long as they agreed.
- Never clone celebrities, public figures or anyone who hasn't agreed, even for parody, without legal advice.
- Disclose AI voices to your audience and use platform labels.
- Respect a withdrawal of consent promptly.
- For commercial or high-stakes work, ask a lawyer where you work.
How abcVoiceover's rules line up
abcVoiceover's terms of service allow only your own voice or a voice whose owner has agreed to it being used this way, and rule out impersonation, deception, scams and harassment. Accounts are invite-only and for people 13 and over. Audio generated by the Chatterbox model carries an inaudible watermark.
This isn't legal advice
Laws on voices and AI differ between countries and states, and they're changing quickly. This page reflects our understanding in late 2026. For your own situation, especially anything commercial, check with a qualified lawyer.