Synthesia's AI Governance Page Lost the Word "Consent"
Worth Knowing
Synthesia’s AI Governance Practices document used to open by stating, in plain words, that it requires each person to consent before their voice or likeness is cloned. That sentence is gone. In its place is a governance framework built around a “3Rs” model and alignment with an international standard.
In human terms: If you brief a client on why Synthesia is the responsible choice for a spokesperson avatar, the document you would have pointed to no longer carries the clean, quotable consent promise. It now points to process and certification. The word consent does not appear on the updated document at all.
Why this matters: A small change here captures a large industry drift. Companies that first explained responsible AI in human terms, consent and control, are increasingly explaining it through management systems and certifications instead.
To be fair to Synthesia, it still describes avatar consent safeguards elsewhere on its site, so this is not evidence that it stopped obtaining consent. What changed is narrower and still worth noting: its formal AI Governance Practices document no longer contains the categorical consent commitment it previously made.
A promise you can read in one sentence and a framework you have to trust are not the same thing to a client asking hard questions - and it's exactly the type of mechanism we've seen companies widen over time.
The mechanics: The prior document stated that Synthesia “requires that each person consent before their voice or likeness is cloned for an avatar, whether it’s for a Stock Avatar available to all customers, or a Custom Avatar.” The updated document is “structured around its 3Rs framework, Review, Report, and React,” and says Synthesia “aligns its practices with international standards, such as ISO/IEC 42001:2023.” The word consent appears zero times in the updated version of this document.
