How to File a YouTube Takedown if Your Voice Has Been Cloned
With YouTube’s new privacy and AI rules (updated summer 2025), voiceover artists now have clearer protection against the unauthorised cloning and resultant synthetic use of their likeness.
If you discover that someone has used an AI version of your voice in a video on YouTube without your consent, this page shows how you can act.
It's early days though, and we're not sure how seriously YouTube will take takedown notices when it comes to our industry.
1. How Misuse is Usually Discovered
Cloned voice content on Youtube rarely will have your name attached.
In most cases, discovery comes through:
- Community vigilance: fellow artists flagging when they hear a voice that sounds like yours.
- Clients or colleagues: mentioning that they “heard you” on a video you never recorded.
- Occasional spot-checks: visiting YouTube channels in industries you often work in, to see if any content sounds suspicious.
For now, the best defence is keeping in touch with the community and asking fellow voices to keep an ear out for each other.
2. Gather Evidence
- Save the video URL(s) where the cloned voice appears.
- Make a note of the time offset in the video (e.g. “01:23–01:45”) where the cloned voice can be heard, if it's not at the very start.
- Record yourself reading the same short passage of the video script (or as close as possible). This creates a clear A/B comparison: the cloned voice in the video vs. your authentic voice.
- Keep this comparison as a short mp3 file, which you can upload privately to Google Drive, Dropbox, or similar, and share the link in your complaint.
- Provide a link to your professional profile or demo page (for example, your listing on our site) as further verification that this is your genuine voice.
3. Consider Contacting The Channel Owner
In some cases the fear of their video being taken offline will cause a channel owner to act.
You may be able to find the channel owner's email address by visiting the channel, clicking for more information and scrolling down to "More Info" and clicking on "View email address". However, not all channel owners expose their email address.
They may not like the AI voice themselves and you may find out they may ask for a cost for it to be re-recorded with you.
4. Fill In YouTube’s Privacy Complaint Form
If contacting the channel owner does not work.
You can visit the YouTube Privacy Complaint Form (link below): https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/142443
Click “Submit a privacy complaint”.
Indicate that the content uses your AI-cloned or synthetic voice in a way that makes you identifiable.
Add the video link(s) and specify the time offset(s).
In the description, you might say something like:
I am a professional voiceover artist, and the voice used in this video is an AI-generated clone of my likeness. I did not provide permission for my voice to be cloned or used in this way. Clients and peers could reasonably believe this is my work, which damages my reputation.
Here is a link to my official profile and demo for comparison. I have also recorded myself reading the same section to demonstrate the similarity.
Video link: [paste the YouTube URL]
Time offset: [e.g. 01:23–01:45]
My professional voiceover profile: [link to your professional page or demo]
Comparison recording: [private link to your audio reading the same script line]
5. Submit and Monitor
After submission, YouTube will review the complaint.
They may contact you for clarification.
If confirmed, the video can be removed for violating YouTube’s privacy and AI impersonation policies.
Alternatively if it is deemed a mass-produced video providing no creative value it may be demonetised.
Please let us know any successes or failures using this method so we can aim to get confidence they are taking these types of takedown notices seriously.
