Tokyo court rules person's voice can be protected from AI cloning

The Tokyo District Court ruled on September 30 that the human voice is legally protected in Japan after voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda sued the operator of TikTok over videos he says featured an AI-generated clone of his "lustrous" baritone. Presiding judge Aya Takahashi said the unauthorized use of a performer's voice "can be considered an infringement on publicity rights" when the purpose is exclusively to take advantage of its commercial appeal, describing a voice as "as symbolic of one's personality as portraits are." The ruling is believed to be Japan's first on AI voice cloning. The court dismissed Tsuda's request for the videos' removal because the anonymous account behind the 188 videos had been deleted in May 2026; the judgment did not determine whether Tsuda's rights were actually infringed, and he sought no damages. TikTok argued the videos used a generic male voice whose similarity to Tsuda was subjective. Tsuda filed the suit in November 2025. TikTok is operated by ByteDance.