You’re creating on Descript, which means…

Perpetual and irrevocable

Both words, in the same clause. There is no end date and no mechanism anywhere in these terms to withdraw the licence. Each word appears exactly once in this document, and this sentence is where.

This clause needs no survival clause

A licence that is already perpetual and irrevocable outlives the agreement on its own terms. Section 22 also names Section 8 on its survival list, but that is belt-and-braces here — the survival list is doing real work for the other sections it names, not for this one.

Your name and your face

The sentence does not stop at your files. It reaches “any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content” — you, not just your work, on the same terms.

Formats that do not exist yet

The phrase “now known or later developed” means the licence is not limited to the media you uploaded into. Whatever the distribution channel turns out to be, this grant already covers it.

Three limits, not one

The licence is nonexclusive, so you keep the right to license the same material elsewhere. Its stated purpose is narrow — “to provide, maintain, and improve the Descript Service”. Both of those sit before the sentence's single semicolon. Only the third, the proviso handing Projects to Section 9's confidentiality rules, sits after it.

Read which way it points

This one reads “You hereby grant to us”. Section 5.1 says the opposite — “we hereby grant to you a limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable, non-sub-licensable, revocable license” to use the app. Theirs to you is revocable and cannot be passed on. Yours to them is neither.

The counterweight

This is the clause that does the most work for you in the whole contract, and it is the reason the licence above is less alarming than its adjectives. Your raw footage is contractually your secret, not Descript's asset.

Where it stops

It opens with “Except as otherwise provided in these Terms”. Anything another clause already permits is outside the promise, and Section 9.2 also carves out content that has become publicly known, including if you designate a Project as “public”.

Who can still see it

The list of people it may be disclosed to runs to officers, employees, agents, assigns, consultants, contractors, service providers and affiliated entities — each bound by confidentiality, and none of them named.

Deletion runs one way, and it is theirs to trigger

The deletion sentence sits inside the termination clause and follows from Descript ending your access. Nothing here is a delete-my-account button, and nothing here retires the licence you granted in Section 8.2.

The only exit you are given

Section 23 says “You also have the right to stop using the Descript Service at any time” and attaches no consequence to it — no deletion, no wind-down, no effect on the licence. There is no user-account-deletion clause anywhere in this document.

With or without cause

The account can be terminated without notice and without a reason. Combined with the deletion sentence, the only copy you can rely on is the one you made yourself.

The list is precise about Section 9, and only Section 9

Every other entry is a whole section. Section 9 is the one place the drafters went to subsections — they wrote “9.1, 9.2” and stopped. Section 9.3, the AI voice consent, is the only numbered subsection in the contract left off the list.

The numbers do not match the headers

From Section 15 on, this document contradicts itself. The liability cap sits under the header “15. Limitation of Liability” but calls itself “THE LIMITATIONS SET FORTH IN THIS SECTION 16”; the header “19. Binding Arbitration” covers a body that says “this Section 20”. A reader who opens Section 16 by its header finds the Release. Read the body text, not the numbering.

The model is a different thing from the recording

Your Training Audio is User Content and you own it. The AI Voice is defined as “an AI model trained on voice recordings of a Consenting Speaker” — a thing Descript builds and runs. No clause in this document says you own it. “You own” appears three times in the whole contract: once for Input and Output, once for a copyright you already held, once for an Apple device. Never for an AI Voice.

This is a consent, not a licence

Section 9.3 grants nothing and carries none of the words from Section 8.2. What you give is consent “to our use and storage of such Training Audio”. The adjectives on the User Content licence do not travel here — “perpetual”, “irrevocable” and “worldwide” appear once each in this document, all three in Section 8.2.

And the survival list leaves it out

Section 22 names 9.1 and 9.2 by subsection and does not name 9.3. On the voice consent the contract does the opposite of what it does on the licence: one is stated to survive, the other is not.

Humans, named

Most contracts hide the humans behind a faceless category of staff. This one names Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, twice. Crowd workers may listen to your training audio and to speech synthesised in your voice.

They can make it say things

Subsection (d) lets staff and contractors generate new utterances in your cloned voice. The stated limits are that they be non-defamatory and for internal quality assurance, and that the voice is not shared beyond that.

The consent runs through you

You warrant that every Consenting Speaker agreed. If you submit someone else's voice without it, the indemnity in Section 13 puts the cost of that on you.

Inputs are User Content

Which means the perpetual, irrevocable licence in Section 8.2 reaches your prompts as well as your footage. You own them; the licence covers them.

Opt out, not opt in

Descript may train its own models on your inputs and outputs until you turn that off. The contract does not say where the setting is or what the default is.

The vendors are fenced

Third-party AI providers can access your inputs and outputs to run the feature, but Descript's agreements with them “prohibits them from using such Inputs and Outputs to train their models”. That limit binds the vendors, not Descript.

Assign, not license

A licence lends; an assignment transfers. This clause moves ownership of the idea outright, and it is the only place in the contract where that happens — “assign to us” appears once.

It is broad on purpose

It reaches “any questions, comments, suggestions, opinions, observations, usage information, or feedback” — a support ticket and a product idea are treated the same way.

And you may be asked to sign for it

The clause also commits you to “execute such documents and take, at our expense, such actions as we may reasonably request” to perfect Descript's ownership. Beta users agree to supply feedback as a condition of access, and it lands here too.