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PolicyMediaJapanConfirmed

Japan’s copyright council sets out how Article 30-4 applies to AI training and outputs

See how this story connects

Source: Agency for Cultural Affairs: General Understanding on AI and Copyright in Japan (overview)Also reported by APAA

The Legal Subcommittee of the Copyright Subdivision of Japan’s Council for Cultural Affairs published its General Understanding on AI and Copyright on 15 March 2024. It says training on works is generally allowed under Article 30-4 of the Copyright Act, except where the purpose includes enjoying the works, as with fine-tuning to reproduce them or building retrieval-augmented generation databases meant to output their expression (which Article 47-5 may still permit), or where use unreasonably prejudices rights holders, such as ignoring crawler blocks on licensed databases. Outputs infringe when they are similar to and dependent on an existing work, and both users and AI businesses can be liable.

Why it matters

AI developers training models in Japan got official guidance on which uses fall outside the Article 30-4 exception, though the document is not legally binding.

When
15 Mar 2024
ID
WTA-N-2024-0058
Where
Japan
Who
Agency for Cultural Affairs
Topics
Copyright

Summary by wheresthe.ai, from Agency for Cultural Affairs and the reporting credited above. Checked against the source on 9 Oct 2026.

Read the original at Agency for Cultural Affairs

Source copy: download the source PDF as saved on 18 Oct 2026 (PDF). Document the source offers: the source PDF. Also held by the Internet Archive.

Next stop on this Storyline: Built on byJapanese content group CODA asks OpenAI to stop training Sora 2 on members’ works

Cite this story

WTA-N-2024-0058: “Japan’s copyright council sets out how Article 30-4 applies to AI training and outputs.” wheresthe.ai, 15 Mar 2024. https://wheresthe.ai/d/jp-aca-general-understanding-ai-copyright-2024-03/ (source: Agency for Cultural Affairs: General Understanding on AI and Copyright in Japan (overview)).

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