AI art generation and plans going forward? Drawn by Humans.
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Hello !
I was wondering if J-novel and others in the Manga publishing industry have thought about the ramifications of AI art generators and how to handle this going forward. I know that I personally and many other Manga readers want our content produced and drawn by humans but worry about two things. 1) Artists being replaced by AI generators and 2) being able to distinguish works that are hand drawn and those that have been generated.
I think a good solution to this would be a drawn by human certificate of some kind either issued by a third party or the publisher itself on works that can verified as actually having been hand drawn. There is a good blog post on how this would look in practice here :
https://www.williammontout.com/design-writing/certified-human-made-at-the-age-of-ai
Interested in both J-novel's and other readers opinions on the matter.
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@Andyyy We don't really create the content we license ourselves, so it's not directly up to us to police how Japanese publishing companies create rules moving forward about use of AI creation technology.
It's definitely a problem they will need to address very quickly though... I'm sure it's just a matter of time before some illustrator is accussed of using AI art tools, or an author/web author passing off AI generated text as their fully original work, etc...
User generated content sites like pixiv, shosetsu ni narou, kakuyomu, etc, are all rapidly facing a choice about what to do with posted AI content and how to label it, or not allow it at all, and how to even police it... It's not an easy issue for them to deal with.
For J-Novel Club, anyway, currently I think we can be pretty confident that anything we have licensed was created the old fashioned way, but in the end we are going to be relying on the Japanese publishers word about who the original creators are...
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I think AI art is inevitable. My concern lies not with the consumption of it, but how it's used in the creation process.
I think there are two types of AI art out there. Maybe a couple more with various nuances, but these are the two ways I distinguish it:
- AI being used to generate art by itself.
- AI being used as a tool by real artists to speed up their process.
Option #1: On the one hand, perhaps someone with a creative mind but no artistic talent for drawing or painting has a great idea for an artwork, and the AI can help them create it, when they otherwise wouldn't be able to. While this sounds good in theory, the problem with this method is that it often relies on models generated using other people's artwork. It's also too much of a shortcut for someone with copycat ideas to flood the market :-(
Option #2: A talented artist can train the AI themselves on their own artwork, and then use it simply to speed up the process towards completing a new work. Any good artist would obviously make further finishing touches to the final product. I think this is the better way to do it.
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The biggest issue on JNCs side is probably that the way it stands right now an AI generated work isn't copyrightable as I understand it in the US if it follows example 1 that pcj posted above.
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@jpwong Yeah, option 1 is, by precedent, unable to obtain copyright protection in the US because it's not produced by a human (and neither are works of art created by animals, so knock yourself out counterfeiting elephant paintings and monkey selfies — it's not a crime!)
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@jpwong That's only true so far in the US (and maybe UK?). I'm not sure Japan's courts have ruled on anything similar, and if they do they might rule differently.
In fact, considering how much the Japanese government is pushing AI, I suspect they might actually legislate it's copyrightable in Japan.Then, in that case, it doesn't matter what the US courts think the Berne Convention would require US companies recognize the Japan copyright.
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@admin I was wondering how that might impact things like takedown notices and such, though the courts would have to work out who actually owns the copyright in example 1. Example 2 is far more clearcut if the sample set is the author's own work and is only used to assist rather than the total production based on illegally lifting other people's works.
