Voice Rights & AI Disclosure

Last updated: 2026-07-09

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 the author's real recordings survive, a studio-designed AI voice where they do not, never a lost archival recording and never passed off as one — and 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.

The three labels

• Restored from real recordings — the narration is produced by an AI voice model built from the author's own public-domain archival recordings. The full audiobook you hear is AI-generated audio: a restoration of how the author sounded, applied to their own text — not a surviving recording of them reading the book. No such recordings exist.
• Studio AI voice — an interpretive synthetic performance. Where no authentic recording of the author survives (Darwin, Tolstoy, Adam Smith and many others), no restoration is possible. For those books the narration is performed by an AI voice designed in our studio for that author — a historically informed interpretation, not a reconstruction. It is not built from recordings of the author (none exist), it is not the author's voice, and it is not a human narrator. Like everything we publish, it is AI-generated audio and labelled as such before you press play.
• Disputed historical recording — the archival source recording exists but its attribution is historically contested (scholars still argue over whether it is really the author). We label the voice as disputed rather than claiming certainty.

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?".

Are these the authors' real voices?

You are never hearing a lost archival recording of the author reading the book. Where a genuine public-domain recording of the author survives, we use it 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. Synthetic audio is disclosed as AI-generated, as EU AI Act Article 50 requires; the Act's transparency obligations have been in force since 2 August 2026 and this disclosure implements them.

Can I request that a voice be removed?

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

• Your relationship to the author or speaker (estate executor, heir, performer, representative)
• The specific content you would like removed (author, title, ad creative, URL if on our site)

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.

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 voice is labelled, every text is public domain, and every takedown is respected.

Standards we follow

We align our voice-rights practice with the following statutes:

• EU AI Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50 — transparency obligations for synthetic audio. In force since 2 August 2026.
• California AB 1836 (2024) — digital-replica rights of deceased persons (70-year post-mortem period).
• California AB 2602 (2024) — digital-replica rights of living performers.
• New York Civil Rights Law §50-f — digital replicas of deceased persons (40-year post-mortem period).
• Tennessee ELVIS Act, Tenn. Code Ann. §47-25-1101 et seq. (effective 1 July 2024) — voice and likeness protection.

Questions or removal requests

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