Japanese renowned voice actor Kengo Tsuda has recently officially filed a lawsuit against the operator of the short video platform TikTok, accusing it of infringing on his voice copyright. As a representative figure in the voice acting industry, Tsuda's move marks the first step in the industry's resistance against the illegal theft of personal voiceprints by generative AI.

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At the age of 54, Tsuda is globally renowned for voicing the character "Shouya Nanami" in the hit anime "Jujutsu Kaisen." His unique and magnetic voice is an irreplaceable professional asset. The plaintiff stated that an unknown account used generative AI to imitate his voice and created a large number of voiceover videos, which illegally earned money through the platform's traffic-sharing mechanism every month.

These AI-generated videos have widely spread on the platform, seriously damaging the commercial value of the voice owner. Tsuda has formally filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court, condemning TikTok for allowing such infringement to be commercially disseminated and demanding the platform to immediately delete all involved videos.

Platform Denies Infringement and Defends Strongly

In response to this accusation, the operator of TikTok presented a completely different defense in court. The platform emphasized that the voiceovers in the disputed videos were merely "common male voices," and the uploaders had clearly indicated that the voice was created by letting AI learn their friend's voice.