Tokyo District Court rules a person's voice can be protected under publicity rights, in Japan's first ruling on an AI voice clone

What happened

On 30 September 2026, the Tokyo District Court ruled that a person's voice can be protected under the right of publicity, the first ruling of its kind in Japan, the Associated Press and dig.watch (Diplo) reported. The case was brought by anime voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda, best known as Kento Nanami in "Jujutsu Kaisen" and Seto Kaiba in "Yu-Gi-Oh!", against the operator of TikTok; Music Business Worldwide, citing AFP, reports Tsuda filed the suit in November 2025, citing both publicity rights and Japan's Unfair Competition Prevention Act. Tsuda said an anonymous TikTok account called "Nanami" had wrongfully profited by using an AI-generated imitation of his voice to narrate more than 180 videos about urban legends and paranormal phenomena (Kyodo News, via dig.watch, put the figure at 188 videos posted between July 2024 and September 2025), and he asked for the material to be deleted; the account had more than 200,000 subscribers as of November 2025. Presiding Judge Aya Takahashi said "the human voice is symbolic of individual personality, just like one's portrait", and that unauthorized use with an obvious intention to take advantage of the commercial appeal of Tsuda's voice can be "an infringement of publicity rights". TikTok's operator argued the narration used a generic male voice that would not be mistaken for Tsuda's. The court dismissed Tsuda's demand that the videos be deleted because the account had already been closed (in June 2026, per dig.watch), and it did not rule on whether Tsuda's own rights had actually been infringed in this case.

Why it matters to creators

This is the first Japanese court finding that a performer's voice itself — not just their name or image — can carry a legally protectable commercial identity, including against an AI-generated imitation that is not a copy of any actual recording. For voice actors and other performers, it provides a court precedent in Japan for challenging unauthorized AI voice clones distributed on a major platform, and the claim was directed at the platform operator rather than only at the anonymous uploader. It also follows August 2026 interpretive guidelines from a Japanese Ministry of Justice study group stating that voices are protected under publicity rights, including where reproduced by generative AI; those guidelines interpret existing law and are not legislation.

What is not yet known

The court established the principle but made no finding that Tsuda's rights were infringed by these specific videos, and granted no removal order or damages because the account was already deleted. It is not yet known whether the ruling will be appealed, how Japanese courts will apply it where the allegedly cloned content is still online, or how platform operators will change their handling of AI voice-clone complaints in response.