The fingers blackened by India ink, the screeching of the pen on the paper, the furiously crumpled sheets overflowing from the trash can… So well portrayed in the manga Bakuman, by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, the artisanal production of Japanese comics is evolving under the blows of increasingly powerful artificial intelligence (AI), which raises questions about copyright and the artistic value of the work .
The magazine Shounen Champion will release an AI-directed episode of BlackJack, the manga of the famous author Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989). The mythical weekly had published, from 1973 to 1983, the two hundred episodes of the adventures of a genius surgeon practicing medicine without authorization.
“It’s a challenge, but I know that Osamu Tezuka would definitely have used the AI if he was still alive”, explained, Monday, June 12, Macoto Tezka – who is due to this spelling of his name. The mangaka’s son has taken over the management of the studio created by his father, Tezuka Productions. He is at the origin of the project, baptized “TEZUKA2023”, to resuscitate BlackJack, with Satoshi Kurihara, professor at Keio University and specialist in AI.
Throughout his career, Osamu Tezuka presented in his works the hope of a bright future, while inciting the reader to wonder about technologies. His most famous creation, Astro, the little robot, addressed through its hero, an android boy, the relationship to robots and atomic energy. blackjack raised social and ethical issues, such as dignified death and organ transplants. For Mr. Tezka, this specificity is a good way to “addressing the challenges that arise in the field of creativity. I hope AI will not replace humans, but develop human creativity”.
Reduced involvement of creators
Two types of AI are used for the new BlackJack. GPT-4 must develop a base storyline from instructions regarding the chosen structure, characters, worldview, and theme. Stable Diffusion realizes the faces of the characters and the frames, thanks to the analysis of the style of Osamu Tezuka, his line, the facial expressions or the backgrounds. “We’re interested in how humans and AI work together to create new storylines and character expressions”says Mr. Kurihara.
AI is still in its infancy in manga creation, although in the 2010s Hitoshi Matsubara, a professor at the public university of the future in Hakodate (northern Japan), had created a system capable of to generate story ideas and sketches.
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