AI dubbing vendors put the consent burden on their customers

What was announced or recorded

Two AI dubbing vendors used by short-drama export apps document different consent models, not one industry standard. ElevenLabs' dubbing documentation describes a service translating audio and video across "90+ languages" while "preserving the emotion, timing, tone and unique characteristics of each speaker," with a "cloning strength" control on its Dubbing v2 Alpha model that adjusts how closely a dubbed voice resembles the original speaker. Deepdub's own homepage instead markets access to "a broad voice bank with full commercial rights," describing voices as "licensed for any usage" for media and entertainment clients including drama production. Both are living pages describing current commercial offerings as retrieved on 16 September 2026.

What the documents establish

ElevenLabs' documentation itself makes no statement about consent or cloning authorisation; that obligation sits instead in its separate Terms of Use, which state a user may create a voice model only "using a voice you are authorized to share with us," and must represent that submitted material "will not violate any rights of any person or entity." The terms grant ElevenLabs broad rights to reproduce and distribute a submitted voice to run and improve the service, while promising the company "will not commercialize your voice on a standalone basis without your permission." Nothing specifies what counts as adequate proof of a voice owner's authorisation — the burden sits with the customer uploading the voice, not a verification step ElevenLabs performs. Deepdub's page establishes a different model: rather than a customer supplying a voice and attesting to its rights, the vendor sells access to voices it already states are "rights-safe" from its own bank, shifting the licensing question to Deepdub's own sourcing.

Announced versus delivered

What is announced, in both cases, is a commercial capability and a stated policy; what is not established is how either vendor verifies a claim of authorisation before processing a real actor's voice, or what recourse exists if a customer's attestation is false. ElevenLabs' terms place the legal risk on the uploading customer by contract; Deepdub's marketing places the assurance on its own catalogue, but neither page documents an audit or verification process a reader can check independently.

What to watch

Editorially, an export app dubbing an actor under contract, rather than using a vendor's pre-licensed bank, needs its own signed record of that performer's consent before uploading a voice sample, because the vendor's terms make clear the platform is not the party attesting to authorisation. Whether either vendor later publishes a more specific verification step is the fact that would change this reading; as documented now, both put the paperwork burden on the entity closest to the performer.

• Does the production hold a signed consent record from the performer covering AI dubbing or voice cloning?
• Is the voice used the performer's own submitted sample, or a vendor's pre-licensed catalogue voice?
• What does the vendor's contract require the customer to warrant, and who bears liability if false?

A vendor's terms of use allocate legal risk; they are not a substitute for a production's own consent paperwork, and the two documents examined put that paperwork in different places.