Cartesia acceptable use: the explicit consent clause for clones

Cartesia's acceptable use policy puts the consent duty on the person submitting audio: you may submit your own voice, or recordings of others with explicit consent, and you are solely responsible for having the rights and consents for that input. It also bars impersonating another person, including celebrities, and impersonating political candidates or government officials. The wording is on Cartesia's policy page (read 2026-10-02).

Sume's text to speech runs on Cartesia Sonic models, so the same expectation is the safe baseline for any clip you upload to Sume's Voices library.

The clauses that matter

The page does not say that synthetic audio must be labelled, and it does not single out deceased people. It is a rights-and-impersonation policy, not a disclosure policy, so labels still come from the law and the platform where you publish.

Why this applies to a Sume clone

Sume's TTS Router catalog lists Cartesia Sonic ids such as sonic-3.6, and library voices carry a Cartesia voice id. Cartesia's 2026 changelog (read 2026-10-02) shows sonic-3.6 as the current model from 27 August 2026. Sume's Voices library in the app has a create dialog that takes a name, a gender, a language and an uploaded or microphone-recorded clip. That dialog has no consent-recording step, and the public API has no route that creates a clone.

That means the dialog will not stop you from uploading someone else's clip. Your release is the control.

A one-page consent record

A short written record covers most of what the policy expects.

• Name the speaker, the date and the project the voice may be used for.
• State that synthetic speech from the voice may be published, and where.
• Say how the speaker can withdraw, and what happens to existing audio.
• Store the signed record next to the voice id in your own files.
• Do not clone anyone who is not reachable to sign, including a public figure.

What to do next

Check the policy page again before a campaign, since it can change. For the Sume side of the clone flow, read Voice cloning API, and for what Sonic 3.6 changed, Cartesia Sonic 3.6 API.