Overview
- ElevenLabs and Stan Lee Universe announced on Wednesday, May 27 that an AI recreation of Stan Lee’s voice and likeness is now listed in ElevenLabs’ Iconic Marketplace for licensed commercial use.
- The deal will put Lee’s AI voice into ElevenLabs’ Eleven Reader app with a monthly “Stan Lee Book Club,” starting in June with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and continuing with one public‑domain title each month.
- Users can generate comic‑style images of Lee through visual templates but those images and videos are limited to non‑commercial use, while any commercial deployment requires approval from Stan Lee Universe.
- ElevenLabs says the voice model was trained on professional recordings of Lee, and the announcement prompted immediate ethical criticism citing consent concerns and past allegations about Lee’s final years.
- The agreement follows ElevenLabs’ recent expansion of its Iconic Marketplace and fundraising, and it joins a wider industry trend of estates and celebrities licensing posthumous or recreated likenesses for AI products.