China's First AI Voice Imitation Case Ruled, miHoYo Awarded 750,000 Yuan

A court in Shanghai's Pudong New Area has ruled on China's first unfair competition case involving AI voice imitation. miHoYo found that an AI voice-changing app offered voice packs of 63 characters from Genshin Impact for paid use, along with many character images, and sued the operating company.

The defendant argued the voices came from AI model training and that voice rights belong to the voice actors. But a forensic voice analysis found the app's demo voices were likely identical to the game's original voices. The defendant admitted in court that it used one-minute audio clips of Genshin Impact characters mixed with other materials to train its AI voice model without permission.

The court ruled that a game character's voice is determined by preset attributes and serves as a commercial identifier. The defendant was ordered to stop the unfair competition and pay miHoYo 750,000 yuan.

On September 7, 2026, China's Supreme People's Court issued its first judicial rules on AI-related disputes, stating that using a person's voice to train AI and generate synthetic voices without consent can be ruled as infringing voice rights.