{"id":915382,"date":"2026-09-30T14:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/915382\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T14:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:00:12","slug":"ai-tool-that-copied-actors-lustrous-voice-violated-his-rights-tokyo-court-rules-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/915382\/","title":{"rendered":"AI tool that copied actor\u2019s \u2018lustrous\u2019 voice violated his rights, Tokyo court rules | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A court in Japan<\/a> has ruled that the human voice has legal protection after a landmark case involving a well-known actor and a TikTok account that he claimed had cloned his \u201clustrous\u201d baritone voice in its AI-generated videos.<\/p>\n

Tokyo district court said on Wednesday that voices should enjoy the same protection as publicity rights, at the end of a closely watched legal action brought against TikTok<\/a> by Kenjiro Tsuda \u2013 best known for voicing the character Kento Nanami in the anime Jujutsu Kaisen.<\/p>\n

But the court dismissed Tsuda\u2019s request that the operator of TikTok<\/a> remove the videos, noting that the user had deleted them soon after the suit was filed last November. \u201cThe unauthorised use of a performer\u2019s voice \u2026 can be considered an infringement on publicity rights,\u201d said the presiding judge, Aya Takahashi.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit is believed to be the first in Japan seeking to defend an individual\u2019s vocal identity against AI-generated copies. Japan\u2019s voice actors, many of whom achieve star status through their \u201cappearances\u201d in anime<\/a>, are increasingly worried that AI mimicry is threatening their livelihoods and the industry as a whole.<\/p>\n

An actor\u2019s voice \u201cis the result of years of rigorous training and apprenticeship\u201d, Yuko Sasaki, executive director of the Japan<\/a> Actors Union said ahead of the ruling.<\/p>\n

Tsuda, 55, claimed that the 188 TikTok videos uploaded on an anonymous account between July 2024 and September last year had been narrated by a \u201cdeep\u201d and \u201clustrous\u201d voice that could only be his. In response, the platform argued that the videos contained a \u201cgeneric male voice\u201d and that any perceived similarities to Tsuda\u2019s voice were highly subjective.<\/p>\n

The verdict is the first in which a Japanese court has declared that the human voice is protected under publicity rights, a reference to the ability to control and profit from aspects of an individual\u2019s identity, in Tsuda\u2019s case his distinctive voice.<\/p>\n

The protection applies \u201cif the purpose of using the voice is exclusively to take advantage of its commercial appeal\u201d, Takahashi said, describing a voice to be \u201cas symbolic of one\u2019s personality as portraits are\u201d.<\/p>\n

The TikTok account, whose picture resembled Tsuda\u2019s Jujutsu Kaisen<\/a> character, combined images and AI-generated speech about urban legends, the occult and conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n

At one point, the account had more than 200,000 subscribers and, according to the legal complaint, the clips would have earned its owner between \u00a5500,000 (\u00a32,395) and \u00a575,000 in monthly revenue, the Kyodo news agency said.<\/p>\n

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Describing the content as \u201csordid\u201d, Tsuda\u2019s legal team claimed the account had only attracted attention because it had cloned the \u201cattractive voice of a popular actor\u201d.<\/p>\n

TikTok said in a statement it would \u201crespect the court\u2019s judgment while considering what steps to take after scrutinising [the ruling\u2019s] details\u201d. It added: \u201cWe will continue to sincerely work on the balance between technology development and rights protection.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024, actors in Japan launched a campaign called \u201cNo More\u201d to oppose the unauthorised use of their faces and voices in AI-generated content.<\/p>\n

With reporting by Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A court in Japan has ruled that the human voice has legal protection after a landmark case involving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-915382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}