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ElevenLabs partners with Stan Lee Universe for AI voice


TL;DR

ElevenLabs has partnered with Stan Lee Universe to bring the late Marvel co-creator’s AI-generated voice and likeness to its platform. The deal puts Lee’s voice on the Iconic Marketplace for commercial licensing, launches a Stan Lee Book of the Month Club on Eleven Reader, and adds his likeness to Creative Templates.

ElevenLabs has struck a deal with Stan Lee Universe to add Stan Lee’s voice and likeness to its platform, making the late Marvel co-creator the latest deceased cultural icon to be digitally resurrected by AI. The partnership puts Lee’s voice on the ElevenLabs Iconic Marketplace for commercial licensing and on the Eleven Reader app, where fans can have him narrate any book. His likeness will appear on ElevenLabs Creative Templates, and two Stan Lee-inspired music filters are being released on ElevenCreative Music.

The voice was crafted from professional recordings of Lee, who died on 12 November 2018 at the age of 95. Stan Lee Universe is the joint venture between Genius Brands International and POW! Entertainment that controls Lee’s name, voice, likeness, and post-Marvel intellectual property.

A book club narrated by a dead man

The centrepiece of the deal is the Stan Lee Book of the Month Club, launching inside the Eleven Reader app. Each month, ElevenLabs will release a public domain classic narrated in Lee’s AI-generated voice, starting with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in June. The company says it will add one title per month for the next 12 months.

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The choice of public domain works is practical. It avoids the licensing complexity of narrating copyrighted books in a synthetic voice while giving ElevenLabs a recurring content programme tied to a recognisable name. Users can also select Lee’s voice to narrate any book in the Eleven Reader library, extending the partnership beyond the curated monthly picks.

Cameos, but make them AI

Lee’s likeness is coming to ElevenLabs Creative Templates, the company’s visual content generator. Users will be able to create images and videos featuring Lee in the spirit of the on-screen cameos that became his signature across decades of Marvel films. All personal use is non-commercial and governed by safety guidelines approved by both parties. Licensed commercial use of Lee’s likeness is available through the Stan Lee Universe team.

Two music Finetunes, Superhero Swells and Retro Hero Fanfare, round out the offering. These are music filters on ElevenCreative Music designed to evoke the aesthetic of Lee’s universe. They are available to all ElevenLabs users with no additional licensing required.

The consent-based model

The deal follows the consent-based licensing framework that ElevenLabs built when it launched its Iconic Marketplace in November 2025. The marketplace connects brands with rights holders for verified celebrity voices, including Michael Caine, Matthew McConaughey, Judy Garland, Burt Reynolds, John Wayne, and Liza Minnelli. ElevenLabs acts as an intermediary, handling licensing agreements and voice synthesis while ensuring that estates and rights holders retain control.

That framework matters because the alternative is already here. AI-generated songs have appeared on deceased artists’ streaming pages without estate or label approval, and unauthorised voice clones of public figures circulate freely. ElevenLabs is positioning its marketplace as the legitimate alternative, a model where the rights holders initiate and control the licensing rather than discovering their assets have been cloned without permission.

Chaz Rainey of Stan Lee Universe framed the partnership as a continuation of how Lee engaged with fans throughout his career. Lee was famous for meeting audiences wherever they were, whether in comic book pages, at conventions, or in his trademark movie cameos. The AI voice and likeness tools are pitched as the next iteration of that tradition.

A $11 billion bet on voice

ElevenLabs raised $500 million in a Series D round in February 2026, led by Sequoia Capital, valuing the company at $11 billion. That was more than triple its previous valuation from a $6.6 billion employee tender offer in September 2025. The company closed 2025 at $330 million in annual recurring revenue and has raised $811 million in total funding.

The Stan Lee partnership is the latest in a series of high-profile deals that position ElevenLabs as the dominant platform for AI-powered digital afterlives. The Iconic Marketplace already hosts voices ranging from living celebrities like McConaughey and Caine to historical figures including Maya Angelou, Alan Turing, and Mark Twain. The company’s roster spans actors, athletes, scientists, and cultural icons.

Stan Lee Universe has been active in licensing Lee’s legacy since its formation in 2020. In May 2022, it signed a 20-year deal with Marvel Studios granting exclusive rights to use Lee’s name, voice, likeness, and signature in future films, television productions, and Disney theme parks worldwide. The ElevenLabs deal extends that licensing strategy into AI-generated content, a category that did not meaningfully exist when the Marvel deal was signed.

The uncomfortable question

The partnership will inevitably invite scrutiny. The ethics of AI-generated content remain contested, and putting a dead man’s voice and face into new creative contexts, no matter how carefully licensed, raises questions that consent frameworks alone cannot fully answer. Lee cannot approve what his AI likeness says or does. The rights holders can, and in this case they have, but the distance between estate approval and personal consent is a gap the industry has not resolved.

What ElevenLabs and Stan Lee Universe have built is the most commercially structured version of digital resurrection yet attempted for a pop culture figure of this stature. Whether that structure is sufficient to honour the legacy it claims to protect is a question that will follow every AI-generated cameo, every synthetic narration, and every licensed use of a voice whose owner is no longer here to hear it.



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Recent Reviews

Netflix buried this Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, and it’s better than Encanto


When Encanto was released, it was something of a cultural phenomenon. You couldn’t escape the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” and the soundtrack went to the top of the charts. If you loved Encanto, there’s another overlooked Lin-Manuel Miranda animated musical on Netflix that’s better in many ways.

Vivo is another Lin-Manuel Miranda musical

He’s also the voice of the lead character

Vivo the kinkajou from the movie Vivo. Credit: Sony Pictures Animation

Vivo is a 2021 animated musical comedy from Sony Pictures Animation, the same studio behind smash-hit movies such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and KPop Demon Hunters. Directed by Kirk DeMicco, who co-wrote it with Quiara Alegría Hudes, it features original songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the musical genius who shot to superstardom on the back of Hamilton.

Miranda also plays the title character of Vivo, a kinkajou (a small, nocturnal mammal) whose days are spent earning money by playing music in the plaza with his aging owner, Andrés. When Andrés dies, Vivo makes it his mission to deliver a song that Andrés wrote to his old friend Marta Sandoval, a famous singer played by Gloria Estefan. The song reveals Andrés’ true feelings for Marta, but he could never bring himself to give it to her.

Vivo is helped on his quest by Gabi, a young misfit and the daughter of Andrés’ niece. The movie follows their journey through the Florida Everglades to reach Miami and deliver the song.

Why Vivo flew under the radar

The big theatrical release never happened

Gabi and Vivo on a raft in the movie Vivo. Credit: Sony Pictures Animation

Vivo is an animated musical from a major animation studio, with a cast of big names including Miranda, Gloria Estefan, and Zoe Saldaña. It features music from one of the most in-demand songwriters in the world, who also stars in it. Why isn’t it more well-known?

Perhaps the biggest reason is that Vivo never got its expected theatrical release. After the global pandemic disrupted Sony’s plans for a wide theatrical release, the rights were sold to Netflix. Instead of a major theatrical run, it joined the huge catalog of Netflix, where shows and movies all too often get buried by the churn of new content.

It meant that, unlike Encanto, Vivo never really got the chance to enter the zeitgeist or become a TikTok staple. Its fairly quiet release on a streaming service meant that it never got the attention that it deserved.

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Vivo’s music hits different

Gloria Estefan still has it

When Encanto came out, people raved about the music. The song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” went viral, with an endless stream of TikTok videos. To my mind, however, the music in Vivo is just so much better.

I never really got the hype about “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” It’s not bad, but it’s not even the best song in Encanto. While the music in Encanto is good, none of the songs really stand out as being classics. I listen to a lot of Disney movie soundtracks with my kids, and Encanto very rarely makes the playlist, while Moana, which also includes songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, gets played far more often.​​​​​​​


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What gets played a lot is the Vivo soundtrack because it’s genuinely brilliant. There’s something for everyone, too; there are four of us in the family, and each of us has a different favorite song from the soundtrack. That’s how good it is.

“One of a Kind” is the song that introduces us to Vivo and Andrés, and it’s a great mix of classic Cuban mambo and clave rhythms combined with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s trademark hip-hop flow. “My Own Drum” is an absolute banger sung by Gabi featuring possibly the greatest recorder solo of all time. My personal favorite, “Keep The Beat,” is a gorgeous song about keeping going when things start to change.

The most beautiful song in the movie is “Inside Your Heart,” performed by the legendary Gloria Estefan. This is the song that Andrés wrote for Marta, expressing his feelings for her. It’s a stunning song, and Estefan’s voice still sounds incredible. For me, it lands far harder than anything in Encanto.

What Vivo offers that Encanto doesn’t

There’s more than just the awesome music

2D animation of a young Andres and Marta dancing from the movie Vivo. Credit: Sony Pictures Animation

While both movies have music written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, only one of them features the songwriter in the main cast. Some of the fast-paced rhymes in Vivo are so distinctive that you can’t imagine anyone else doing them justice, as Dwayne Johnson proved in Moana.

Vivo also has a more dynamic story, with the action involving a race from Cuba to Miami rather than being set entirely within one location like Encanto. It also includes some interesting stylized 2D sequences that mix up the look of the movie. The emotional stakes are also much higher in Vivo, with a story that touches on death, regret, lost love, and finding your place in the world.

That’s not to say it’s a perfect movie. The plot does dip a little in the middle, but the stunning music and bittersweet ending make up for the flaws.


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Check out Vivo if you haven’t already

If you loved Encanto and you haven’t watched Vivo, you should definitely check it out. It’s a movie that really deserves more attention than it gets. I guarantee it will be the best kinkajou-based animated musical you’ll ever see.



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