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Voice cloning has reached Downing Street. What performers, and the people who hire them, can do now

On 28 August more than 80 performers wrote to Andy Burnham asking for a legal right to their own voice. The law hasn't moved yet, so for now the protection is whatever gets written into the booking.

By James Jones, founder of Granary Digital · 28 September 2026

On 28 August 2026 more than 80 performers wrote to the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, asking for a statutory right over their own voice. Hugh Bonneville, Nicola Coughlan, Siobhán McSweeney, Matt Lucas and Sandi Thom were among the signatories, and the letter was co-founded by the audiobook narrator Alice Sockett. So this is a voice-work story as much as a screen one.

A government spokesperson replied that it will "launch a consultation on how we address these harms while protecting legitimate innovation", MLex reported on 1 September.

Where the law has got to

  • 18 March 2026. The government's report on copyright and AI dropped the proposed text-and-data-mining opt-out, which fewer than 3% of 11,520 consultation responses supported, and said it "no longer has a preferred option". The Secretary of State, Liz Kendall, promised a consultation on digital replicas "in the summer".
  • 15 May 2026. The government's response to the House of Lords committee repeated "this summer".
  • 15 September 2026. After the First Secretary, Louise Haigh, spoke about AI at TUC Congress, Equity called for a personality right covering voice, face and likeness, with licensing, takedown and compensation. Its general secretary, Paul W Fleming, said: "The government can come good on that promise by introducing personality rights." Equity says it hopes a consultation opens before the end of 2026.

As of 28 September we can find no sign that the digital replicas consultation has opened. Summer has been and gone.

On screen work, Equity's indicative ballot of 7,732 eligible performers, announced on 18 December 2025, found 99.6% would refuse on-set digital scanning without proper AI protections, on a 75.1% turnout. Pact made an improved offer on 21 January 2026. We couldn't confirm whether an agreement has been signed since.

Meanwhile synthetic voices keep getting easier to buy. Audible opened AI narration to publishers on 13 May 2025 with more than 100 AI voices. Listeners are less keen: Edison found in July 2026 that 85% of UK weekly podcast consumers disapprove of AI hosting. That's podcast data, not audiobooks or adverts, but it is the nearest UK measure we have of how an audience feels about it.

What a performer can ask for today

Until there is a law, the protection is the paperwork. Before any session, with any client or any studio, these are fair questions:

  1. Who keeps the recordings, and for how long? The raw session, every take, the edited masters. "Indefinitely" is an answer, just not a reassuring one.
  2. What is the recording licensed for? Which media, where and for how long. It is the same usage question a studio asks before it quotes a read.
  3. Can it be used to train or build a synthetic voice? Ask for a plain no in writing, in the booking confirmation or the contract, unless you are being paid for exactly that.
  4. What happens at the end? Deletion, when, and who confirms it.
  5. How do the files travel? A private link that expires leaves less lying about than a shared folder nobody remembers setting up.

None of this needs a lawyer. It needs asking before the session, while everyone is still in a good mood.

And for the people doing the hiring

Producers, agencies and authors who book voices want the same thing from the other side: a read recorded under clear terms is a read nobody argues about later. Put the answers in the booking, so nobody negotiates at the microphone. If you plan any AI process on the recording afterwards, clean-up, translation or anything else, say so before the session.

If you're directing from somewhere else, the same questions apply to wherever the files land at your end, and to anything recorded on the line.

What our own published rules say

We publish the rules for our ADR and dialogue room, because unreleased picture comes through it. We sign your NDA before any picture is sent. Phones stay out of the room while unreleased picture is on screen. Picture and takes are kept for 30 days in case of pick-ups, then deleted unless you ask us to keep them longer. Files go out by a private link that expires, or through your own transfer system.

Those rules were written for picture security, and we won't dress them up as an AI policy. They cover the first question on the list and most of the last two, and that is the level of detail to ask any studio for, in writing, before the session.

The same room records voiceover and audiobooks. If you're booking either with us, ask what happens to the files first and you'll get a straight answer.

Sources

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The picture at the top of this article is an illustration generated to show the set-up. It is not a photograph of a client or of a real job.

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