The Japanese government has sent a warning to the company behind ChatGPT and Sora 2 due to ongoing copyright infringements.
What is this warning about? According to the Japanese website itMedia, the Japanese government is said to have sent a notice to the AI company OpenAI. The Minister of State for “Intellectual Property Strategy”, Minoru Kiuchi, who is responsible for Artificial Intelligence in Japan, reportedly mentioned this notice at a press conference.
The government calls on the company to “take no actions that could constitute copyright infringement,” explains Minoru Kiuchi.
Copyright Issues
Why is there a warning now? Since its release in late September 2025, users of the new AI tool have been able to generate short video clips by typing text into a text field. The tool is so advanced that just one sentence is enough to create a stunningly realistic scene from an anime, video game, movie, or manga.
For example, a gameplay video from Cyberpunk 2077 has been created that closely resembles the original and only has minor flaws. The Japanese government is clear: “Anime and manga are irreplaceable treasures that we can be proud of worldwide.”
Accordingly, the government does not want tools that can easily create slightly altered copies of original works. In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, this was already possible with just one sentence without special prompts.
What does the government want to achieve? In the official transcript (via digital.go.jp), Digital Minister Masaaki Taira makes it clear: “I believe OpenAI needs to adjust or optimize the AI generation Sora2 to comply with Japanese regulations.”
The letter, which is not available to the public, likely addressed exactly this issue. OpenAI was probably called upon to modify Sora 2 so that users could no longer generate copyrighted material at the push of a button. Whether and how OpenAI responded to the notice is unknown.
Artificial intelligence is getting smarter. For example, another OpenAI tool can already easily bypass safety mechanisms for robots – and this is simply because the developers wanted to teach the tool how to book a flight: An AI defeated the protection against robots just so it could book a vacation
