ExpressiveLabs Character Usage Guidelines

General content guidelines

• When creating fan artworks, we ask you to remain mindful of the original character, their description, and their backstory.
• When using official artwork provided by ExpressiveLabs, please credit the rightsholders accordingly (example: “Copyright © [year] Lovesick Hospital for ExpressiveLabs”).
• Do not depict our characters as minors, unless explicitly specified in their character description.
• Do not misrepresent our characters in any way. Examples of this include:
  • Attributing content where our products are used to a different character, company, or artist. All content that uses or depicts our products must sufficiently credit ExpressiveLabs and the name of the product (example: “Sayaka AI - © ExpressiveLabs”)
  • Creating alternative versions of our characters. All our characters’ identities are carefully constructed to be used and represented as-is. If a character’s description lists the character as being non-binary, transgender, homosexual, or any other description of gender, romantic/sexual orientation, race, disability, or age, respect this. An exception to this is the creation of alternative designs and outfits, which is permitted and fully encouraged.
• Do not alter the output of our products using voice changing software beyond minor edits. Minor edits include pitch correction, filtering, the use of vocoders, or any edits made possible by dedicated voice processing audio effects (i.e. iZotope Nectar, Melodyne, et cetera).
• Do not use our products, any assets contained therein, or any output generated by them to create or train voicebanks, voice changing models, voice cloning models, or any software similar in nature. This also applies to the creation of so-called “jinriki” voice libraries for the UTAU software or derivatives using the output of any of our products.
• Do not participate in the sharing, usage, and promotion of voice products that are illegally derived from ExpressiveLabs products. ExpressiveLabs reserves the right to deny service to anyone who participates in, uses, or promotes these activities or has done so in the past.
• Do not use our products to create hateful content or misinformation.
  • It is forbidden to create content that claims to represent the voice providers of our products. Doing so will result in a complete denial of service. All product licenses will be suspended immediately and ExpressiveLabs will pursue legal action against the offender.
  • It is forbidden to create content intended to offend people based on gender, orientation, ethnicity, race, or disability. ExpressiveLabs reserves the right to take (legal) action against violations of this guideline.
• Users assume full liability to hold or obtain the necessary rights to background music, instrumental tracks, additional voice library characters from other companies, and/or any elements of the work that they did not create. ExpressiveLabs will not be held responsible for the abuse of copyrights or other license rights by the user.

Political and religious content

Using our products to depict a user’s political or religious views is allowed as long as the following guidelines are considered:

• The work must be accompanied by the following disclaimer: “The opinions and views displayed in this work do not represent [Product Name], ExpressiveLabs, or any of its partners”
• The views presented in the work must be clearly separable from the character. For example, it is not permitted to include lyrics such as “Sayaka believes in [x]” or similar statements that can be interpreted as factual.
• Content that positively portrays topics such as gender diversity, romantic/sexual orientation, or race is not considered political nor religious. The use of our products is allowed freely in works depicting or describing these topics.

NSFW and suggestive content

The creation, posting, and sharing of NSFW art is allowed as long as the following rules are taken into account:

• The website, platform, or community that the art is posted to must have implemented a tagging system capable of marking or detecting the work as being of NSFW nature. The platform must allow users to explicitly opt in in order to view NSFW content. An exception is made for private messages where all recipients are adults.
• The creator of the work must be of the age of majority in the country they reside in.
• The characters depicted in the work must be explicitly classified as adults and must be depicted as such.
• The following things are not allowed when depicting any of our products:
  • Uncensored nudity
  • Gore, vore, non-consensual content
  • Content involving minors
  • Sexual content involving characters created by other companies, where no explicit permission is given to create NSFW content
• Do not use official social media tags (such as #SayakArt, #JinshIllust, et cetera) in association with NSFW artwork.
• Do not post NSFW artwork in official communication channels operated by ExpressiveLabs (such as the Mikoto Community Discord server).
• Individual characters may have different usage guidelines regarding NSFW content. Please always make sure that the art you are creating is in line with the specific guidelines for the character.

Resale, redistribution, and file hosting

It is not permitted to redistribute content you receive under license from ExpressiveLabs (or any of its partners) or host such data on any server or cloud platform with the intention of making it available for download to third parties. ExpressiveLabs and its licensing partner Moonbase AS are the only authorized providers of software downloads.

Reselling licenses is allowed, though we ask for your patience during the process. All transfer requests are processed manually, so it may take us a while to transfer your license to the recipient. Please get in touch if you want to use this service.

Commercial usage

Creators are allowed to sell copies of their fan-made artworks and original songs without any prior permission from ExpressiveLabs. This includes commissioned artwork, or the service of creating or rendering audio files for a third party using our software.

Creating and selling fan-made merchandise is only allowed with written permission from ExpressiveLabs. Please get in touch to talk about what you plan to sell, where you plan to do this, and if you can, send a sample to ExpressiveLabs. We are very excited to see what people create, so please send us everything you make with our characters!

If you are a company looking to created licensed character merchandise for any of our products, please reach out to us to discuss your idea.