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This is a follow up to this question.

If I record my own work (original texts, phrases, sentences, etc.) using Amazon's Polly, who owns the copyright on those recordings?

In the AWS TOS section 65.5, they say:

The distribution of audio output files created by Amazon Polly may require that you obtain license rights from third-party owners or licensors of content that you include in your text inputs into Amazon Polly. You are solely responsible for obtaining these licenses and paying any necessary royalties or fees.

From this excerpt, should I infer that I'm the owner of the copyright on the audio files, if I own the content used as input?

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may require that you obtain license rights from third-party owners or licensors of content that you include in your text inputs

(Emphasis mine).

Based solely on the excerpt above, yes, you have the copyright on the audio files if you created the source material, as you are the creator, using Amazon Polly as/to generate a "tangible medium".

One of the central rights granted by copyright is to control translation into a different medium (in this case, from text into audio), as is the right to control distribution, which is what this excerpt is talking about.

"Third party" in this case means neither you nor Amazon. Basically, Amazon is informing you that using their software on someone else's copyrighted material does not grant you copyright on the audio recording.

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  • I think it's clear that nobody other than the person who used Polly to generate audio from a non-copyrighted source text would have a copyright interest in the audio thus produced, but does that imply that the person who generated the audio would hold copyright, or could the work in question simply be regarded as non-copyrightable?
    – supercat
    Aug 9, 2021 at 21:00

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