MiHoYo awarded $112,000 by Chinese court after AI voice service dupes Genshin Impact characters
MiHoYo has secured a legal victory in China. A Shanghai court has ordered an unnamed generative AI developer to pay ¥750,000 (approximately $112,000) for the unauthorized reproduction and sale of voices from Genshin Impact.
As reported by The Paper, this marks Shanghai's first case involving "unfair competition" through the use of AI to recreate voiceover work produced by other companies. miHoYo accused the defendant of using generative AI to replicate the voices of 63 Genshin Impact characters and leveraging in-game images and story animations to advertise and sell illicit voice packs to customers.
The court ruled that these actions demonstrated an intent to capitalize on the game's popularity. On June 30, the defendant was ordered to cease distributing the assets and pay damages to miHoYo. Although the company briefly appealed the ruling, the appeal was withdrawn in recent months.
It is important to note that this ruling specifically addresses the use of generative AI to replicate and sell copyrighted material. It does not settle the ongoing legal debates regarding the use of copyrighted content as training data for AI models, which remains a complex issue in international law.