The estate of the late Marvel comics icon Stan Lee has reached an agreement with an artificial intelligence firm to license his voice and likeness for commercial projects. ElevenLabs, an AI audio company, has secured the rights to reproduce Lee’s voice and image, allowing other businesses to use them in advertisements, films, and other media. This deal represents a significant shift in how legacy entertainment properties interact with generative technology.
ElevenLabs plans to make Lee’s AI-generated voice available for audiobook narration, including a special “Stan Lee Book Club of the Month” series. Users of the platform will also be able to create comic book panels featuring Lee’s likeness using pre-made templates. These tools aim to let fans engage with the content creator’s brand in new ways.
“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.”
Chaz Rainey, a lawyer and board member for Stan Lee Universe, the company currently managing Lee’s intellectual property, made the comment to Variety. Rainey added, “This partnership is a way of continuing that. 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.”
This is not the first time Lee’s voice and image have been recreated using AI. At last year’s Los Angeles Comic Con, visitors could pay between $15 and $20 for a three-minute conversation with an AI version of Lee created by Proto Hologram, an experience that drew criticism from some fans. The incident highlighted the growing demand for digital avatars of public figures.
The legal ownership of Lee’s image and voice has been a contentious issue. Stan Lee Universe operates as a joint venture involving Lee’s former company, POW! Entertainment. Before his death in 2018, Lee filed a lawsuit against POW! Entertainment, accusing its leadership of conspiring to “fraudulently steal” his name and likeness for financial gain. These disputes often arise within the entertainment industry as intellectual property rights evolve.
At the time of the lawsuit, Lee was 95 years old and had been diagnosed with advanced macular degeneration, a condition that severely limited his ability to read without assistance.
ElevenLabs has included Lee among the voices in its AI library, which already features recordings of both living and deceased celebrities such as Michael Caine, Matthew McConaughey, Judy Garland, David Hasselhoff, and Albert Einstein. Caine has previously described the technology as “using innovation not to replace humanity, but to celebrate it… It’s not about replacing voices; it’s about amplifying them, opening doors for new storytellers everywhere.” The company’s AI tools were also used to recreate the late James Earl Jones’ voice as a playable character in Fortnite. Such projects are common in the ElevenLabs ecosystem.
