Interest

Shonen Jump+ Editors Co-Develop AI Tool For Manga Writing

AI art may be a contentious subject these days, with Japanese content websites DLsite, Ci-en, pixiv FANBOX, and Fantia all banning or restricting its use on their platforms just last week, but there are still many other avenues for AI tools in creative work that don't involve a machine generating the entire product for you. Shueisha editor Yūta Momiyama, who manages Weekly Shonen Jump's Shonen Jump+ and MANGA Plus online services, is particularly interested in how AI can help ease the tedious aspects of the writing part of manga creation.

Momiyama revealed on Twitter last Thursday that he and Shonen Jump+ editor-in-chief Shuhei Hosono co-developed the Comic CoPilot AI tool, which utilizes ChatGPT with an easy-to-understand Japanese interface. The tool can be used to help come up with titles and names, as well as shortening dialogue to make it fit speech bubbles. The latter is a particularly big deal for manga creators, as individual lines of dialogue will often take multiple rounds of editing in order to succinctly convey the desired message.

The other co-developer of the tool is Kensuu, representative director of the technology company alu, which primarily deals with AI and NFT projects. In a message on the Comic CoPilot website, Kensuu commented that although he has heard many worried predictions that AI will steal jobs, he believes that AI can actually enhance the scope of creation.

Users are directly encouraged to post their AI-assisted creations on the user-generated manga websites Shonen Jump Rookie and Manga-No. The site's FAQ warns that although it is admissible to use the AI-generated advice and ideas, some content may be drawn from existing works of manga, and users are individually responsible for confirming whether the content infringes intellectual property.

Sources: Yūta Momiyama's Twitter account, Comic CoPilot's website via Animehunch