Course resource
Voice Cloning Ethics Guidelines
Voice cloning is the one technique in this course with a real capacity to harm people. These are the rules to work by.
The single rule
Never clone a voice without the explicit, informed, written consent of the person it belongs to.
Not implied consent. Not "they're a public figure". Not "it's obviously a parody". Not "I only used it internally". Written, specific, and revocable.
Your own voice is the exception, and even then see the section on protecting it below.
What consent actually requires
A usable consent covers all five:
- Who is cloning the voice.
- What it will be used for — specific uses, not "marketing".
- Where it will appear and for how long.
- Whether the output will be labelled as synthetic.
- How they withdraw consent, and what happens to existing material when they do.
A template:
I, [NAME], consent to [ORGANISATION] creating a synthetic version of my
voice from recordings I provide.
It may be used for: [SPECIFIC USES]
It may appear on: [CHANNELS]
Until: [DATE OR EVENT]
It will be labelled as AI-generated: [YES / NO / WHERE]
It may NOT be used for: [EXCLUSIONS — at minimum: political content,
endorsements, anything implying a view I have not expressed]
I may withdraw this consent at any time by [METHOD]. On withdrawal,
[ORGANISATION] will stop new production within [PERIOD] and
[REMOVE / RETAIN] existing material.
Signed: ______________ Date: __________
Keep it. An informal yes over chat is not a defence if the person later objects.
Never, regardless of consent
- Impersonating someone to obtain money, access or information. This is fraud, and voice-cloned "family emergency" calls are currently one of the most effective scams running.
- Putting words in a real person's mouth that they did not say, where an audience could reasonably believe they said them.
- Political speech in a real person's voice. Several jurisdictions now criminalise this near elections specifically.
- Sexual content in anyone's voice.
- Cloning a deceased person's voice without the family's agreement, whatever the public-domain status.
- Cloning a child's voice. A child cannot give the consent this requires.
Disclosure
The test is not "is this legal" but would the listener feel misled if they found out?
| Situation | Disclose? |
|---|---|
| Your own voice, narrating your own script | No |
| Your own voice, dubbed into another language | Yes, once |
| Your own voice saying something you did not write | Yes |
| Another person's voice, with consent | Always |
| A generic synthetic voice that sounds like nobody | Usually not |
| Anything presented as a testimonial or endorsement | Always |
| Anything a listener might act on financially | Always |
When you disclose, do it where it will actually be seen. A note in the video description is not disclosure if the claim is in the first ten seconds of audio.
Cloning your own voice
Legitimate and useful — dubbing, narration at scale, recovering a bad take. Two cautions.
You cannot un-publish a voice model. Once the clone exists on a provider's platform, you are trusting their access controls. Use a provider with real verification and delete models you no longer need.
A clone of you can be used against you. Anyone with three minutes of your published audio can already make a passable clone. So:
- Agree a safe word with family and close colleagues. Use it to verify any urgent request involving money.
- Establish an out-of-band rule: hang up and call back on a number you already have.
- Tell the least technical person in your life about both. They are the target.
The law, briefly
It is moving fast and differs by country. What is broadly true:
- Using someone's voice commercially without permission engages personality or publicity rights in most jurisdictions.
- Several places have introduced specific synthetic-media offences, particularly around elections and intimate imagery.
- Platform terms often prohibit undisclosed synthetic media independently of the law.
- "I did not know" has not worked as a defence anywhere.
This is not legal advice. For anything commercial involving a real person's voice, get an actual lawyer.
Before you publish
- Written consent on file, covering this specific use
- Use is within what was consented to
- Not in any "never" category above
- Disclosed where a listener would want to know
- Someone other than me has reviewed whether this could mislead
- I can explain this decision to the person whose voice it is