AI voices: your rights and obligations (commercial use, AI Act)

12 October 2026 · 7 min read · Figures checked on 12 October 2026

You have generated an AI voice-over. Can you put it in a monetised video? Do you have to tell your audience? What happens if someone recognises a voice? Here is where the rules stand on 12 October 2026, in plain words: what you may do, what you must do, what is forbidden. The references are those that apply in France and the European Union; if you publish from elsewhere, local rules add to them.

Who owns the generated audio?

At Aievalu, audio files produced with paid credits are assigned to you: you may use, edit, distribute and monetise them, including in YouTube videos, podcasts, paid courses or client work. That right survives the expiry of your credits. Only free-trial audio is limited to personal, non-commercial use. The details are in our terms of use and summarised in the FAQ. Other tools have different rules: ElevenLabs reserves commercial use for paid plans, Murf includes it from the Creator plan, and open models such as Voxtral under a CC BY-NC licence exclude it. Always read the "commercial use" line before producing; our comparison lists it tool by tool.

What is forbidden, everywhere

Three limits do not depend on the tool. First, imitating a real person's voice without their express consent: that is a violation of personality rights and, depending on context, identity theft. Aievalu's preset voices are not clones of identifiable people; if you use a cloning tool elsewhere, the person's written consent is the minimum. Second, producing unlawful content: defamation, harassment, incitement, sexual content involving minors. Third, deceptively presenting synthetic content as genuine, such as a fake testimonial, a fake statement by a public official, a fake phone call.

The AI Act: say it is synthetic

The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) sets out, in Article 50, transparency obligations that apply since 2 August 2026. In short for a creator: if you publish AI-generated audio that could be taken for authentic, you must clearly inform the public that it is synthetic, at the latest at first exposure. Clearly creative or fictional content gets a lighter obligation: it is enough to disclose that generated content is present without spoiling the work. Providers of AI systems must, for their part, mark outputs in a machine-readable way; that is why every MP3 produced by Aievalu carries a marker in its metadata. The full text is on EUR-Lex.

In practice: the narration of a tutorial or a documentary is not a deepfake, but an "AI-generated voice" note in the description or the credits puts you on the right side at no cost. A fake dialogue presented as a real interview is forbidden, note or no note.

YouTube, TikTok and the others

YouTube asks creators to flag, at upload, realistic "altered or synthetic" content: a person saying something they did not say, a realistic scene that did not happen. A narrative voice-over generally does not fall into that category, but the rule evolves, so check the YouTube help page before any sensitive upload. TikTok and Instagram have similar "AI content" labels. In every case, monetisation is not forbidden because a voice is synthetic; what matters is the added value of the content and the absence of deception. Our YouTube and TikTok guides detail the settings.

Your texts, your data

The text you submit is sent to the speech engine to produce the audio, then not stored: only a technical hash is kept to prevent double charging. Audio stays 90 days in your history, then is deleted; download what you want to keep. You can export your data and delete your account at any time. If your script contains third parties' personal data (a client's name in a training module, for instance), you remain responsible for processing it; the privacy policy describes what we do on our side.

Rights in the text itself

Having a text read aloud does not change its author. A book excerpt, a press article, song lyrics: if you have no right to reproduce them, you have no right to have them read publicly, AI voice or not. Texts you wrote, public-domain texts and texts your clients entrust to you with their agreement raise no issue.

If you produce for clients

Agency, freelance editor, training provider: you deliver the audio to a third party. State in your quote or terms that the voice is AI-generated, that the client may exploit it commercially without time limit, and that no real person's voice was used. Keep the original MP3 with its metadata marker: it is your proof of transparency if the question ever comes up. And if the client wants an exclusive voice, that is the moment to suggest a voice actor, as explained in our article on what a voice-over costs in 2026.

In practice: the checklist

• Paid credits for any commercial use; the free trial stays personal.
• No imitation of a real person, no deceptive content presented as genuine.
• An "AI-generated voice" note whenever the content could pass for real.
• The platforms' "synthetic content" boxes ticked when the case applies.
• Texts you hold the rights to.

This article is general information, not legal advice; for a specific situation, consult a lawyer. For everything else, the best way to check that a voice fits your use is to listen to it: our samples are freely available, and pricing includes commercial use from the €9 pack.