LONDON–Might Ed Filene soon be voicing of credit unions? He could if he joins Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Amelia Earhart and other historic figures who can now all be hired to appear in advertising through ElevenLabs’ Iconic Marketplace, a licensing platform connecting brands with the rights holders of history’s most recognizable voices.
The catalog spans entertainment legends, sports heroes, musical pioneers and historical figures, and continues to expand. Stan Lee’s voice joined the platform in May, built from professional recordings that ElevenLabs said capture “his unmistakable warmth, wit and energy.”
According to the company, for credit unions looking to perhaps add some iconic voices to their messaging, the mechanics work like a talent agency rather than a software product. A brand, studio or publisher browses the catalog and submits a project request describing the format, audience and intended use. ElevenLabs then connects that request to the rights holder directly, and every commercial use requires the rights holder’s approval and signed terms before any audio is generated, according to ElevenLabs.
The Approved Uses
Approved uses span film and documentary narration, advertising, games, audiobooks, podcasts and educational content. Sir Michael Caine became one of the first major living actors to join at the marketplace’s launch, framing the platform as additive rather than replacing human performers. “It’s not about replacing voices; it’s about amplifying them, opening doors for new storytellers everywhere,” Caine said in November. ElevenLabs CEO and Co-Founder Mati Staniszewski called the launch “a true breakthrough for ethical sourcing and licensing of celebrity content.”
Voice Is Becoming Licensable Property
For historical figures like Edison and Twain, whose voices were reconstructed from archival recordings rather than cloned from a living person, the marketplace extends a licensing model that has existed for decades in image and likeness rights into audio for the first time at commercial scale, the company said.
Voice cloning now requires just 20 to 30 seconds of audio, while a convincing video deepfake can be built in 45 minutes using freely available software, according to the World Economic Forum. That barrier to entry shows up in the fraud data: PYMNTS Intelligence found that 58% of companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue reported encountering an AI-generated document or deepfake attack in the past year.
