Voice Rights & AI Disclosure

Last updated: 2026-08-03

Iconic Voices publishes audiobook narrations of public-domain texts — a growing library of classic works in iconic voices. Every narration we publish is AI-generated audio: an AI restoration where recordings of the author's real voice survive, a studio-designed AI voice where they do not, never a lost archival recording and never passed off as one. Every book is labelled before you press play. This page is our transparency disclosure under EU AI Act Article 50 (in force since 2 August 2026) and explains exactly what each label means — and, below, what we can and cannot say about the recordings the restorations are built from.

The three labels

The label for each book appears on its voice page, in the player, and in the iOS and Android apps — always before you press play. Each author's voice page carries a provenance badge stating which mode applies; that per-page badge is the authoritative answer to "who narrated this book?".

Where the recordings come from — and what we can honestly say about their status

The texts are public domain. That part is settled, and it is why we can publish the books at all.

The recordings are a separate question with a separate answer, and we used to blur the two. US law does not give an old recording the same term as an old book. Sound recordings fixed before 15 February 1972 run on their own schedule (the Music Modernization Act, 17 U.S.C. §1401): those first published before 1923 entered the public domain on 1 January 2022; recordings published between 1923 and 1946 get 100 years from publication; 1947 to 1956 get 110 years; and anything else fixed before February 1972 stays protected until 15 February 2067. A recording made in the 1930s or 1940s is therefore not in the public domain today, and will not be for years or decades. Film and newsreel soundtracks follow a different rule again, and a recording that is out of copyright abroad can still be protected here.

In 2026 we audited every restored voice against those rules, author by author, with sources. The honest summary:

So we no longer describe the sources as public-domain archival recordings, because for most of them that is not true. Instead, each voice page names its own source — the recording, its date and occasion, the institution that holds it, and what we can and cannot establish about its status. Where the status is unresolved, the page says that too.

We are also not claiming the opposite. Naming a source is not a claim that we hold a licence to it, and it is not a claim that anyone else's rights have expired. It is a statement of what the recording is, so that anyone with an interest in it can see exactly what we used and tell us to stop.

One more thing that belongs in the open. Several US states protect a deceased person's voice for decades after death — California for 70 years, New York for 40 (for deaths since May 2021), Tennessee under the ELVIS Act, Indiana and Oklahoma for 100 years, Hawaii for 70. For a number of the authors in this library those windows are still open. That is one of the reasons the removal process below is fast, unconditional, and does not require anyone to prove a case to us first.

Are these the authors' real voices?

You are never hearing a lost archival recording of the author reading the book. Where recordings of the author's voice survive, we use them to build the restored voice model, and the result is labelled Restored from real recordings. Where nothing survives, the book is labelled Studio AI voice. Where the historical source itself is contested, the label says Disputed historical recording.

How the disclosure is actually made, today

We would rather be exact than flattering, so here is what exists and what does not. Every book carries its label in the listening interfaces — the voice page, the player, and the iOS and Android apps — always before you press play, and this page carries the disclosure in machine-readable page metadata. What we have not shipped yet is a marking inside the audio files themselves: an MP3 downloaded from us contains no embedded tag or watermark saying it is synthetic, so a file separated from the page it came with no longer carries its own disclosure. We are working on embedding that marking; until it ships, treat this paragraph as the honest limit of the claim. The EU AI Act's Article 50 transparency obligations for synthetic audio have been in force since 2 August 2026, and this page and the per-book labels are how we meet the disclosure duty in the meantime.

Can I request that a voice be removed?

Yes — the default response is removal. Email [email protected] with the subject "Voice removal request", identifying:

We acknowledge within 24 hours and complete removal within 24 to 48 hours. We do not require a formal DMCA notice and we do not litigate takedowns. This applies to rights in the source recording just as much as to rights in a person's voice or likeness — if you hold the recording we built a voice from and you want it gone, that is enough.

Why we do this

Historical knowledge locked in public-domain books deserves a wider audience. A restored voice lets modern listeners hear a text the way its author sounded; an honest narration keeps the rest of the library alive. We chose maximum transparency as the price of doing this at all: every text we narrate is in the public domain, every voice is labelled, every source is named on its own page, and every takedown is respected.

Standards and rules we work to

Questions or removal requests

Voice-removal and rights questions: [email protected]. General legal questions: [email protected]. Everything else: Support.