miHoYo wins lawsuit against AI service for cloning Genshin Impact voices

A court in Shanghai has ordered an artificial intelligence service provider to pay 750,000 yuan (approximately $112,000) to miHoYo, the developer of the game Genshin Impact. The ruling by the Pudong New Area People's Court follows allegations that the service unauthorizedly cloned the voices of 63 game characters.

The AI service allowed users to change their voices in real-time using voice packs based on the game's characters. To create these models, the provider used roughly one minute of original audio per character without permission. The service also utilized original character images and animations in promotional materials and as avatars.

During the legal proceedings, the defense argued that the AI models were trained on large-scale data and that the final output depended on user input. They further contended that voice rights belong to the individual voice actors rather than miHoYo. However, the court rejected these arguments after forensic analysis revealed the AI-generated sounds possessed “almost identical characteristics” to the original character voices. The court ultimately based its decision on unfair competition, treating the specific vocal timbres as identifiers of origin.