In a lawsuit filed by voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda against TikTok's operator requesting the removal of videos that imitated his voice using generative AI, the Tokyo District Court dismissed the claim on the 30th. However, while rejecting the request, the court ruled that a person's voice is also subject to protection under the right of publicity.
The videos in question were urban legend and paranormal content posted by a specific account from July 2024 to September of last year. According to Tsuda's legal team, there were at least 188 videos featuring narration similar to his voice. The account had over 210,000 followers, with an average view count of approximately 1.47 million per video. The plaintiff claimed that the account generated monthly revenue between 500,000 and 750,000 yen (approx. 4.3 million to 6.5 million won).
Kenjiro Tsuda is a veteran voice actor who has played characters such as Overhaul in 'My Hero Academia', Kento Nanami in 'Jujutsu Kaisen', and Hyakunosuke Ogata in 'Golden Kamuy'. When filing the lawsuit last November, he pointed out that the videos' narration was intended to attract viewers by causing confusion with his voice. Accordingly, he claimed a violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act and infringement of his right of publicity. The right of publicity gives celebrities the exclusive right to use the commercial attraction power of their name or likeness. However, it is reported that there are no explicit statutory provisions for this in Japanese law.
TikTok flatly refuted the claims. They stated that the video poster had trained the generative AI on their friend's voice, arguing that the narration was merely a "generic male voice" and would not be mistaken for Kenjiro Tsuda's voice. Furthermore, they noted that the uploader had deleted the account at the end of May this year during the proceedings and no data remained on the server, requesting the lawsuit be dismissed as the legal interest in continuing the suit had ceased to exist.
Presiding Judge Aya Takahashi of the Tokyo District Court dismissed the claim on the grounds that the videos had already been deleted. However, the ruling stated that a person's voice, like their portrait, symbolizes an individual's personality, and that unauthorized use of a voice could constitute an infringement of rights. Observers note that this is the first ruling to explicitly state that the human voice is subject to the right of publicity.
However, the court did not individually rule on whether Tsuda's rights were actually infringed. The plaintiff's legal representative stated that because the entire account was deleted, their original objective was fully achieved, and expressed that this ruling could help support claims in similar lawsuits in the future.
Meanwhile, an expert panel of Japan's Ministry of Justice stated in an August report that legal protection, including publicity rights, could extend to voices. This lawsuit is known to be the first in Japan to address rights infringement involving AI-generated voice clones. Amid ongoing controversies over the unauthorized imitation of voice actors' and singers' voices, attention is now focused on how subsequent lawsuits will handle this issue following the court's determination that the right of publicity—traditionally centered around names and likenesses—also extends to the voice.
