Tokyo court rules AI voice cloning without consent violates publicity rights

A Tokyo court has ruled that human voices are legally protected in a landmark AI case. Anime voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda won a partial victory after claiming his voice had been cloned by an anonymous TikTok account to narrate videos without permission. The court sided with Tsuda, ruling that using someone's voice without consent infringes on their publicity rights, marking a first in Japan. However, his request to remove the videos was dismissed because the account had already been deleted.

Tsuda is a prominent performer with more than 30 years in anime, film and gaming, best known for voicing Seto Kaiba in Yu-Gi-Oh!. He identified his distinctive "lustrous" baritone as the marker of the AI cloning, and his legal team noted the anonymous account reached 200,000 followers at its peak. TikTok argued a "generic male voice" was used instead, disputing the similarity to Tsuda's voice. The ruling reflects growing concerns among anime creators about AI protection, even as Japan's government maintains a pro-AI national strategy, though it did ask OpenAI to exclude anime and manga content from Sora 2 training.