AI voice theft case: Mihoyo wins 750,000 yuan compensation in shanghai's first AI sound imitation dispute

On September 10, 2026, the Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Court ruled in the city's first case involving AI sound imitation and unfair competition. The court found that a company had used AI to replicate the voices of 63 characters from the game Genshin Impact without authorization, offering them as part of a voice-changing app. The app also used game character images. MiHoYo, the game's developer, sued the company, arguing that the AI voice service caused confusion among users. The court ruled that the AI-generated voices were 'tending to be considered the same' as the original game voices, and the defendant admitted to using unauthorized audio to train its AI model. Judge Xu Hongtao stated that a character's voice in the game is determined by its in-game attributes, not by the voice actor's personal style. The court ordered the defendant to stop the unfair competition and pay 750,000 yuan in damages. On September 7, 2026, the Supreme People's Court released guidelines clarifying that using a person's voice without consent for AI training constitutes an infringement of their voice rights.