Wanting to
profit at the expense of the voice of your favorite characters without asking
anyone's permission is playing with fire, and for a Chinese artificial
intelligence company the lesson was quite expensive. Developer miHoYo won
a ruling in its favor in court after suing a voice conversion service operator
that marketed real-time speaking programs with the identical tones of dozens
of Genshin Impact heroes.
The Pudong
New District Court in Shanghai determined that the defendant company illegally
used the voice work of 63 characters from the famous video game. The company
sold resource packs so that its users could modify their voice in transmissions
or calls and sound exactly like Teyvat's figures. To promote the service, the
developers of the tool even created promotional videos using the official
animations, modified illustrations of the delivery for avatars and allowed
listening to sample audios without any license.
Faced with
miHoYo's lawsuit, which demanded compensation of five million yuan and the
cessation of operations, the defense argued that the software worked on a
massive artificial intelligence model and that the rights belonged to the voice
actors and not to the company. However, the acoustic analysis experts showed
that the voices generated were practically identical to the original material
of the game. In addition, the company itself ended up admitting that it fed its
AI model using audios extracted directly from miHoYo's deliveries.
The court
concluded that the visual designs of the characters and the video material are
protected by copyright, adding that each hero's voice has become a hallmark of
the brand over the years. By taking that job to promote a product of its own,
the company engaged in unfair competition by hanging on to the popularity of
the franchise. With this argument, the court ordered an immediate halt to the
service and set compensation of 750,000 yuan (just over $100,000). Although the
company tried to appeal, it eventually withdrew the appeal and accepted the
punishment.
Released in
September 2020 by Chinese developer miHoYo, Genshin Impact is
one of the most successful open-world action role-playing games in the industry
globally. The franchise stands out for its wide catalog of characters, its
elaborate fantasy world called Teyvat and a careful voice acting work in
multiple languages that has become one of its most important hallmarks.
