A Tokyo court has ruled that an AI-cloned human voice can violate an actor's publicity rights, in what is believed to be Japan's first case of its kind. The decision came in a lawsuit brought by Kenjiro Tsuda, a veteran anime voice actor, against an anonymous TikTok account that used AI-generated narration resembling his voice. The court agreed that using an actor's voice without permission constitutes an infringement of publicity rights, according to AFP.
Tsuda's legal team argued that the account's popularity — at its peak it had more than 200,000 followers — was driven by the novelty of its "dubious, sordid content" being read by a recognisable star. TikTok disputed the claim, saying the narration used a "generic male voice" whose similarity to Tsuda's was debatable. The court sided with Tsuda on the publicity-rights question but dismissed his request to order TikTok to remove the videos, since the offending account had already been deleted.
The ruling comes as Japan's government pursues a pro-AI national strategy while facing growing concern among anime voice actors about the use of their work and likenesses in AI training. Last year, the government asked OpenAI to ensure that anime and manga content it called "irreplaceable treasures" was not used to train its Sora 2 generator in ways that violate copyright. The court's decision does not resolve that broader debate, but it establishes a legal foothold for performers seeking to protect their voices from unauthorised AI cloning.