For stock trading, rely on Jin Qilin analyst research reports — authoritative, professional, timely and comprehensive, helping you uncover potential thematic opportunities! (Source: The Paper) With the rapid iteration of artificial intelligence technology, applications such as speech synthesis and voice cloning have gradually become part of daily life. However, while technology brings convenience, it also brings hidden concerns: when someone collects another person's voice without permission, feeds it to train AI, synthesizes speech and commercializes it for profit, how should legal liability be defined?
According to the WeChat public account of the Shanghai High People's Court, on September 29, 2026, the Shanghai First Intermediate People's Court lawfully concluded Shanghai's first dispute over the protection of a natural person's voice rights and interests caused by AI-synthesized speech, ruling that the platform operator constituted voice infringement and ordering it to compensate the rights holder 50,000 yuan for economic losses.
Ms. Wang is a voice actor verified under her real name on a certain app, where she normally performs dubbing and publishes works to earn remuneration. In January 2025, Ms. Wang learned from a friend that Company A had apparently used her voice in an internet promotion and user acquisition campaign. After verification, Ms. Wang believed that the voice used in the campaign was suspected to be AI-synthesized, so she notarized the relevant audio to preserve evidence and filed a lawsuit with the people's court.
Ms. Wang argued that she had never cooperated with Company A or granted it any authorization, and that Company A's unauthorized use of her voice constituted infringement, so she demanded that Company A stop the infringement and compensate 300,000 yuan for economic losses. Company A argued that the audio in question was indeed AI-generated by the company, but that the specific source and the materials used for training could not be confirmed because the former employee had left. The company said it had previously been unaware of Ms. Wang's identity as a voice actor and had not collected or used her voice, and that the existing evidence could not directly prove that her voice was used in its promotional campaign.
Image from the internet. During the trial, to prove the facts of infringement, Ms. Wang conducted a voice analysis and comparison between the notarized audio in question and her own voice collected on the spot through judicial appraisal. The appraisal opinion showed that, among 28 formant acoustic indicators, 24 of the audio in question and Ms. Wang's own audio had a deviation of less than 10%, of which 16 were less than 5.36%, and the parts that were relatively similar and highly similar reached 90%.
The court of first instance held after trial that Company A's conduct constituted infringement through AI-generated voice and caused economic losses to Ms. Wang, and therefore lawfully ruled that Company A compensate Ms. Wang 50,000 yuan. Both parties were dissatisfied with the first-instance judgment and filed appeals.
After trial, the Shanghai First Intermediate People's Court held that, without the consent of a natural person, using the natural person's voice as training corpus to imitate that person's timbre, intonation and pronunciation style to generate a synthesized voice capable of identifying that person should be deemed an infringement of the natural person's voice rights and interests. In this case, Ms. Wang, as a voice actor, had submitted evidence proving that her dubbing works were published on public online platforms, and Company A had information channels and possibilities to obtain the source of her voice. At the same time, according to the appraisal report, the deviation between the synthesized voice and the human voice audio was relatively small, and the two were highly similar, sufficient to lead ordinary members of the public to associate them with a specific identity, with identifiability. Although Company A denied this, as the controlling party in possession of the original training data, it failed to fully prove facts such as the legality of the source of the training materials, that it had not used the natural person's voice characteristics, and that it had not caused confusion or misidentification among the public, and should bear the adverse consequences of failure to prove. Accordingly, it could be found that Company A, without Ms. Wang's consent, commercially used a synthesized voice capable of identifying personal identity to the public, which constituted voice infringement.
At the same time, regarding the determination of the amount of damages for voice infringement, the standard of licensing fees for similar uses by the rights holder should be prioritized as a reference; if the rights holder's evidence is insufficient and the licensing fee is difficult to verify, the amount of losses may be comprehensively determined in light of factors such as the duration of the infringement, the scope of dissemination, the method of use, the degree of fault, the results of damage, and the proportion of contribution of personality elements in commercial exploitation. In this case, the voice in question was launched for a relatively short time and was a procedural broadcast prompt sound effect, not the core selling point or traffic-driving carrier of the campaign. In addition, Ms. Wang's online attention and public activity were not high, and the independent commercial market value of her voice was limited, so it was considered fair and reasonable for the court of first instance to determine compensation of 50,000 yuan at its discretion. In summary, the Shanghai First Intermediate People's Court lawfully ruled: the appeal was dismissed and the original judgment was upheld.