A drop of water can refract the sun's rays.
A case can demonstrate the rule of law.
The official WeChat of the Supreme People's Court has launched the column "Small Cases, Big Truths, New Trends of the Times", taking you to review those shining "small cases", reminisce about the "truths" contained in them, and feel the positive energy of fairness and justice promoted in each judicial case. This issue brings you a case of AI-generated voice personality rights infringement.
With the widespread application of AI speech synthesis technology, it is becoming more and more common for voices to be collected, synthesized, produced, imitated and even tampered with, which poses an unprecedented challenge to the protection of voice rights.
The Beijing Internet Court heard a case of infringement of personality rights in AI-generated voices, and clearly held that the scope of protection of natural persons' voice rights and interests can be extended to AI-generated voices on the premise of being identifiable. After the first-instance judgment of this case was announced, neither party filed an appeal, and it has now taken effect.
Brief facts of the case
Plaintiff Yin Moumou is a voice actor who accidentally discovered that his voice was AI-coded and sold on a platform operated by the defendant's intelligent technology company. Yin Moumou sued the five defendants including an intelligent technology company to the court on the grounds that the defendant's behavior infringed on his voice rights and interests, claiming that the defendant's behavior had seriously infringed on the plaintiff's voice rights and interests, and that the defendant intelligent technology company and the defendant software company should immediately stop the infringement and apologize, and the five defendants should compensate the plaintiff for economic losses and mental losses.
All five defendants denied infringement. An intelligent technology company believes that the sound products in its platform have a legal source, which comes from the defendant software company. The software company claimed that the sound it used came from the defendant, a cultural media company. The Culture Media Company argued that it had cooperated with the plaintiff and agreed that the copyright of the works recorded by the plaintiff belonged to it. The defendant platform operator and the distributor of the products involved in the case also claimed that they did not constitute infringement.
After trial, the court held that the voice of a natural person is distinguished by voiceprint, timbre and frequency, and has the characteristics of uniqueness, uniqueness and stability, and can form or cause ordinary people to have thoughts or emotional activities related to the natural person, and can show the individual's behavior and identity to the outside world. If the voice synthesized by artificial intelligence can be associated with the natural person based on the general public or the public in related fields based on his or her timbre, intonation, and pronunciation style, it may be deemed to be recognizable. In this case, because a software company only used the plaintiff's personal voice to develop the text-to-speech product involved in the case, and after an inquest in court, the AI voice was highly consistent with the plaintiff's timbre, intonation, pronunciation style, etc., which could cause ordinary people to have thoughts or emotional activities related to the plaintiff, and could link the voice to the plaintiff himself, and then identify the plaintiff's main identity. Therefore, the plaintiff's voice rights and interests extend to the AI voice involved in the case. A cultural media company has copyright and other rights in audio recordings, but does not include the right to authorize others to use the plaintiff's voice in AI, and without the plaintiff's informed consent, the act of authorizing a software company to use the plaintiff's voice in AI has no legal source of rights, therefore, the use of the plaintiff's voice by a cultural media company and a software company without the plaintiff's permission constitutes an infringement of the plaintiff's voice rights and interests, and their infringement has caused damage to the plaintiff's voice rights and interests, and they should bear corresponding legal responsibility. In the end, the court ruled that an intelligent technology company and a software company should apologize to the plaintiff, and a cultural media company and a software company should compensate the plaintiff for losses totaling 250,000 yuan. After the judgment was pronounced in the first instance, neither party appealed.
What the judge said
Member of the Party Leadership Group and Vice President of the Beijing Internet Court,
Second-level senior judge Zhao Ruigang
For the first time, the protection of "voice" was written into the Civil Code in the form of legislation, which clearly refers to the application of portrait rights to protect the voice of natural persons, reflecting the legislative spirit of comprehensive respect for and protection of personality rights and interests. It is worth noting that, as a kind of personality right, sound has personal exclusivity, and the voice of any natural person should be protected by law, and the authorization of sound recordings does not mean the authorization of sound AI, and the unauthorized use or licensing of others to use the sounds in sound recordings without the permission of the right holder constitutes infringement.
This case involves the application of AI technology in the field of sound. With the continuous development of the Internet and artificial intelligence, the wide application of AI technology in various fields, and the increasing number of disputes over infringement of personality rights caused by AI technology, the Beijing Internet Court has heard typical cases such as the "case of infringement of personality rights by using AI companion software".
Expert commentary
Shi Jiayou, professor and doctoral supervisor of the Law School of Chinese University
This case clearly shows the whole process of natural person's voice being processed by artificial intelligence to form intelligent cultural service products, and then serve the cultural and art market. The court accurately understood and applied the relevant laws and regulations, fully protected the rights and interests of natural persons' voices, and clarified through this case that sound, as a personality symbol that identifies natural persons, embodies the personal dignity of natural persons and contains certain economic value, and should play a higher duty of care when using the voices of others, otherwise, the unauthorized use of others' voices without legal reasons constitutes infringement. We should also note that the protection of sound rights and interests will continue to be challenged by the development of new technologies, and how to balance the use and protection of sound rights and interests in the complex situation where sound rights and interests are intertwined with other rights and interests needs to be continuously strengthened in practice.
Bian Liu, vice chairman of the China Recording Engineers Association
As we enter the digital age, as a unique information carrier, the protection of the rights and interests of sound is becoming increasingly prominent. As the first case of protection in the AI voice industry, the court found that the defendant's behavior constituted infringement and emphasized the importance of sound as an individual's unique identity, which not only helped safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the plaintiff as a dubbing artist and protected the group interests of the voice acting industry, but also further clarified that the rights and interests of sound in the AI era should be more strictly and comprehensively protected, providing a useful reference for the standardized development of the sound AI industry in the future. It helps to move the protection of sound rights forward.
Source: Information Bureau of the Supreme People's Court
Beijing Internet Court
Edited by Sibo Liu
Second instance Yang Tao
Third trial Zhou Wenjun