Japan Panel to Set Damages Guidelines over AI Voice Use

Tokyo, April 17 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s Justice Ministry said Friday it will set up a panel of experts to set guidelines on civil actions to seek damages for unauthorized use of performers’ voices and images created by generative artificial intelligence. The move is aimed at helping actors, voice actors and others protect their rights at a time when regulations have fallen behind a sharp rise in AI-generated replications without permission. The panel will study such issues as criteria for acts deemed illegal under existing laws and how to calculate the amounts of damages. It will hold its first meeting April 24, aiming to compile the guidelines by this summer. Eight experts well versed in intellectual property laws and the Civil Code will comprise the panel, with Yoshiyuki Tamura, professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, serving as its chair. The panel will specifically discuss whether the unauthorized use of voices and images created by AI amounts to infringements on publicity rights and portrait rights, as well as whether voices are protected by publicity rights. Publicity rights grant famous people exclusive control of the commercial value of their names and photos. In recent years, performers have been suffering increasingly serious cases of unauthorized use of their voices and images in AI-generated products, including AI covers, in which AI is trained with the voices of singers and voice actors without permission to produce replications, and sexual deepfake using actors’ images. But there are no definitive laws and court precedents about unauthorized use of AI-generated voices and images, and victims often give up taking action. The ministry hopes that the envisaged guidelines will help make it easier for victims to file lawsuits. “Sorting out and presenting how laws and regulations can be applied will provide some reference,” a ministry official said. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]