Japan court rules voice rights protected in AI cloning case

A Japanese court ruled on Wednesday that voices are protected by publicity rights, similar to portrait rights, in the first such ruling in the country in an artificial intelligence (AI) cloning case, local media reported.

The Tokyo District Court delivered the ruling in a lawsuit filed by famous voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda, Tokyo-based Kyodo News reported.

The court, however, dismissed his demand that the operator of TikTok take down videos narrated using artificial intelligence with a voice that he claimed was similar to his own.

Tsuda is best known for voicing the character Kento Nanami in the anime "Jujutsu Kaisen."

Currently, Japan does not have any clear laws that stipulate voice rights.

But the Justice Ministry has recently laid out guidelines stating that uploading videos to social media that use voices similar to those of real people and generating revenue from them may constitute a rights violation.

Tsuda filed the lawsuit after an anonymous poster uploaded 188 videos about urban myths, the occult and trivia between July 2024 and Sept. 2025 that were narrated by a voice similar to his.

The account was later deleted in June this year.

An analysis found strong similarities between Tsuda's voice and the AI-generated voice, which the plaintiff said misled viewers.

The operator of TikTok argued the narration employed a "standard male voice" and would not be mistaken for Tsuda, while the poster said the AI was trained using a friend's voice.