Credit: Solen Feyissa on Unsplash A Tokyo court ruled on Wednesday that Japanese law protects the human voice. Anime voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda had sued TikTok over videos he says used an AI clone of his voice. He won in part, as the court turned down his request to remove the videos, Agence France-Presse reported. AFP believes the lawsuit is the first in Japan to defend a person’s vocal identity against AI-generated copies.
Tsuda, 55, voices Kento Nanami in Jujutsu Kaisen and has starred in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. “The unauthorised use of a performer’s voice … can be considered an infringement on publicity rights,” said Judge Aya Takahashi. What the court decided Publicity rights let people control and profit from aspects of their identity. The Tokyo district court found that they cover a voice when someone uses it purely for its commercial appeal. Takahashi, who presided, compared a voice to a portrait as a symbol of personality, AFP reported.
TikTok no longer has to delete the videos, the judge said. The anonymous user behind them had already taken them down. The ruling “ended up making both sides look victorious,” Tsuda’s lawyer, Takashi Hirano, told reporters. A ‘generic male voice’ The account posted 188 videos between July 2024 and September 2025, the Guardian reported.
They mixed images with AI-generated narration about urban legends, the occult and conspiracy theories. The profile picture resembled a Jujutsu Kaisen character Tsuda voices. At one point the account had more than 200,000 followers. Tsuda’s complaint argued it would have brought in more than ¥500,000 ($3,200) a month.
His lawyers said it gained traction only because the voice of a popular actor narrated it. TikTok argued in court that the videos used a “generic male voice”. Any similarity to Tsuda was subjective, it said, according to court records AFP reviewed. After the ruling, the company said it would study the judgment before deciding its next steps. “We will continue to sincerely work on the balance between technology development and rights protection,” TikTok told AFP.
Voice actors push back In 2024, Japanese performers launched a campaign called “No More”. It opposes using generative AI to copy them without permission. Actor Bin Shimada, one of the campaigners, told AFP that unchecked AI voice cloning on social media could crush the industry. A voice “is the result of years of rigorous training and apprenticeship,” said Yuko Sasaki of the Japan Actors Union.
Cloning a voice keeps getting easier. Google’s latest Gemini text-to-speech models can clone a voice from 30 seconds of audio. Viewers objected this week when Netflix used an AI Gene Wilder voice in its Wonka show. ElevenLabs, which sells AI voice tools, doubled its valuation to $22bn on Wednesday.
