top of page

You might be thinking these voicebanks are illegal, but it is quite the opposite.
These UTAU voicebanks were sampled from the free Microsoft voices that came with old computers. And these voices are free to use, and completely royalty-free.

Excerpt from "Commercial use of voices"
"If you use the free Microsoft voices there are no restrictions, but with any of the premium voices like AT&T Natural Voices, neospeech and Cepstral voices, commercial licensing would be required for any type of commercial use or ability to distribute the audio files." 

The Microsoft Sam, Mike and Mary voices have been used for many, many things over the years such as:
⦁    Narration on commercial presentations
⦁    Monetized YouTube videos
⦁    Online, free to use text-to-speech websites
And et cetera.
Note that Microsoft has never asked these people for royalties while using them in these fashions. You don't have to ask Microsoft to use these voices. Besides, SAPI 4.0, the Microsoft Speech API that Sam, Mike and Mary use, was released in 1998. Microsoft does not use these voices on any supported OS anymore, and doesn't provide any help or support with these old engines. Their newest OSes use SAPI5, and you have to install external software to even use SAPI4 voices.


After Microsoft stopped using the SAPI4 voices (after the release of Windows Vista), Speakonia, or CFS-Technologies, basically took control of Microsoft's SAPI4 voices, including Sam, Mike and Mary. But guess what? CFS-Technologies shut down in 2012.

Excerpt from CFS-Technologies' current website
"We are sorry to announce, that there will be no more updates of software by CFS-Technologies in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately we also won’t be able to offer support for our software anymore." 

CFS-Technologies practically gave out the full version of their software to anyone, as well as the Mike, Mary and Sam voices, still free to download on the FAQ page to this day. You can also find free downloads to their voices on thousands of websites.

UTAU Wiki states:
"Voice sources/software/plugins deemed royalty-free are allowed." 

These voices were never pay-to-use, and you never had to ask permission from anyone to redistribute or use them. Also, I am not gaining money from these voicebanks at all. Microsoft frankly couldn't care less about these TTS voices anymore, and the new company that (used to) own the voices after Microsoft gave them up is now defunct.
These voices are, and have been since circa 2002, royalty free and therefore these UTAU voicebanks are not illegal.

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

bottom of page