Mexico Now Requires Written Consent to Clone a Voice. ViX Is Already Dubbing With AI
Mexico has spent 2026 building the most explicit legal protection for voice actors anywhere in the world. Cloning a performer’s voice with AI now requires their prior, written consent and an agreed fee. Dubbing foreign films and series into Spanish or any other national language must, by law, be done by human performers. And in the same summer those laws took effect, the country’s biggest broadcaster confirmed it is already dubbing its telenovelas with AI. Here is what the law says, what it doesn’t, and where the gap is.
Two laws, one spring
The groundwork was laid in February. At the government’s morning press conference on February 2, Culture Secretary Claudia Curiel de Icaza said an initiative to protect dubbing actors’ image and voice rights was ready and had been drafted with the profession itself: “We worked with that whole community, reached an agreement and a design with the Legal Counsel’s office, and the initiative is ready,” she said, as Infobae reported.
VoiceEditSuiteRaw take in. Clean take out.Two separate pieces of legislation followed.
The performers’ reform. On April 7 the Chamber of Deputies approved changes to the Federal Labor Law and the Federal Copyright Law aimed squarely at AI. As Infobae set out, a new Article 305 Bis of the labor law requires contracts with performers to “define clearly the conditions and the payment for the use of image or voice, including when artificial intelligence is used.” Article 87 of the copyright law now demands express consent for the use of a person’s image and voice, extends that protection to results generated by AI, and lets the consent be revoked for just cause. Article 121 says cloning a voice or image “requires a prior written agreement between the parties.” The decree was published in the Official Gazette on May 14 and took effect the next day.
The film law. Alongside it, Congress replaced the 1992 cinema law with a new Ley Federal de Cine y el Audiovisual. The Chamber passed it on April 7; the Senate approved it on April 15 by 87 votes to one, the lone no from Senator Lily Téllez, as El Universal reported. It was published on May 22 and took effect the following day. Its Article 29 is the one dubbing actors had fought for:
“In order to preserve the national linguistic identity, the dubbing of foreign cinematographic and audiovisual works into any of the national languages must be performed by working artists, interpreters or performers, under the terms of the Federal Copyright Law and the Federal Labor Law.”
In plain terms: dubbing into any of Mexico’s languages must be done by people. The same law keeps the rule that cinemas devote at least 10% of weekly screen time to Mexican films, and requires streaming platforms to keep a permanent, visible section for Mexican productions and to offer subtitled, dubbed and accessible versions.
Aurora Mijangos, an actress and dubbing director who coordinated the movement for regulation, told Expansión when the Chamber passed it: “We’re happy with this article because it is a step toward protecting the work.”
Then ViX said the quiet part
On July 28, Expansión reported that TelevisaUnivision is already using AI to dub its telenovelas for export on its ViX platform, using ElevenLabs technology to produce versions in Portuguese and Korean, with Turkey among the markets in view. Alfonso de Angoitia, the company’s president and chief executive, put it this way: “It is now possible to make high-quality dubs with the voices of the actors and actresses thanks to AI. This company offers us an excellent product that lets us, for example, translate a telenovela into Portuguese or Korean quickly.”
Note the phrase “with the voices of the actors and actresses.” This is not a synthetic stand-in. It is the cast’s own voices, cloned, speaking languages they don’t speak.
Where the law reaches, and where it doesn’t
Here is the gap. Article 29 governs dubbing into Mexico’s national languages. A Mexican telenovela dubbed out into Korean for a Korean audience is not what that article regulates. As Xataka México noted on July 31, the company has not explained under what scheme these AI-assisted dubs operate or how they fit the new legal framework, and has not said which telenovelas have been adapted.
What does reach the ViX case is the other law. If the cast’s voices are being cloned, the copyright and labor reforms require each performer’s express consent and a contract that spells out the conditions and the pay for that use, and the consent can be withdrawn for just cause. Whether those agreements exist, and what they say, is the question nobody outside the company has answered yet. The performers’ organisations that pushed for the law, and the actors who have spoken against unregulated AI dubbing over the past year, will be watching the first contract that reaches a court.
What the rest of the world can borrow
Mexico’s package is worth reading closely wherever you work, because it separates two things that usually get muddled. One is the job: who performs the dub. The other is the instrument: who may reproduce your voice, on what terms, for how much. Spain’s dubbing actors are fighting for the second through a contract clause and a refusal to sign, as we reported this week. The US video game contract of 2025 wrote consent and disclosure into a union agreement. Mexico wrote both into national law, then watched a national broadcaster test the edges within weeks.
For a working voice actor, the model clause is now easy to describe in one sentence: nobody clones my voice without my written consent, a stated purpose, an agreed fee, and a way out. If your next contract doesn’t say that, Mexico has shown it can.
Sources: Infobae (2 February and 7 April 2026); Expansión (7 April and 28 July 2026); El Universal (15 April 2026); the text of the Ley Federal de Cine y el Audiovisual; Xataka México (31 July 2026). Quotations from Spanish-language sources are translated by the Herald; the originals are in the Spanish edition of this article.
Lee este artículo en español: México ya exige consentimiento por escrito para clonar una voz. ViX ya dobla con IA