ElevenLabs announced Wednesday that it has a deal with Stan Lee Universe to add Stan Lee's voice and likeness to the company's Iconic Marketplace, and released a video featuring an AI-generated version of Lee's voice.
The company said businesses will be able to license the celebrity personality voice and likenesses from the Iconic Marketplace for commercial use, while users can generate Lee's likeness in comic book–inspired visual templates through ElevenLabs' visual generator. ElevenLabs also said the voice was trained on professional recordings of Lee.
The announcement arrives nearly eight years after Stan Lee's death in 2018 and includes a set of products intended for fans and creators: an Eleven Reader feature that lets users apply Lee's voice to narrate books, a monthly Stan Lee Book Club of the Month series beginning in June with Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and a promise to add one public domain title every month to commemorate Lee's love for books.
ElevenLabs released a short promotional video alongside the deal in which an AI-rendered Lee intones, "You know what they never tell you about legends? They outlive the page," and recites the line Lee popularized, "With great power comes great responsibility." The company also said users can score projects with Stan-inspired music through its Finetunes tool, and that its AI music generator ElevenCreative Music will gain two music filters called Superhero Cinematic Swells and Retro Hero Fanfare.
Stan Lee Universe — the entity controlling Lee's image in the deal and a joint venture between Genius Brands International and POW! Entertainment — is led in part by board member Chaz Rainey, who is a lawyer. Rainey provided multiple statements for the announcement, saying, "Stan always believed in meeting his fans where they were: in the pages of a comic, at a convention, or in a quick on-screen cameo," and adding, "This partnership is a way of continuing that."
Rainey framed ElevenLabs' tools as a way to match fans' memories of Lee's voice to new media: "Fans have always told us that when they read his comics, they hear the words in Stan's voice, and now, thanks to ElevenLabs, we can make that a reality." He also emphasized the intent behind the licensing, saying, "His voice, his image, his love of storytelling… ElevenLabs gives us a way to keep that alive and in fans’ hands in a way that’s true to who he was."
The deal introduces a clear split in how Lee's presence can be used: companies will be able to license his voice and likeness commercially through the Iconic Marketplace, but images and videos produced using ElevenLabs' visual templates that include Lee's likeness are restricted to non-commercial use. That mismatch — commercial voice licenses alongside non-commercial visual templates — is the friction point in the rollout and will shape how brands and creators can employ the AI-rendered Lee.
ElevenLabs already hosts voices and likenesses for other public figures, including Michael Caine, Judy Garland, Burt Reynolds, David Hasselhoff and Albert Einstein, and said the Iconic Marketplace is the channel for commercial licensing. For users who want Lee's presence without a commercial license, the visual templates and the monthly public-domain audiobook program give a controlled way to keep his persona in fan work and reading projects.
The practical result is immediate: in June, listeners will find Treasure Island narrated in a Lee-trained voice via the Eleven Reader, and each month thereafter a new public-domain title will be added to the Stan Lee Book Club of the Month. Beyond that, companies seeking to use Lee's personality commercially will turn to ElevenLabs' marketplace for licensing, while creators who use the visual generator will be limited to non-commercial outputs.
Whether this arrangement preserves Lee's legacy or commercializes it will be decided in the coming months by how strictly the non-commercial limits are enforced and how the Marketplace handles licensing. For now, as Rainey said, "This partnership is a way of continuing that."
