The interview takes place in front of an animated cat avatar on a computer screen. A way for the author to maintain his anonymity. “I didn’t do any illustration, I have absolutely no talent! “says Rootport (pseudonym) who publishes a manga entirely made using artificial intelligence. It is the first work thus produced in Japan. After entering a few keywords into the “Midjourney” AI such as “pink hair”, “Asian boy” and “jacket”, the program gave birth to images of the hero of the story in a minute. Rootport thus produced the manga of a hundred pages in just six weeks, where a confirmed artist would normally have taken a year.
“It was a fun journey, a bit like playing the bingo,” says the artist. In Japan, where the manga industry is lucrative, this announcement raises questions among the creators of these comics. “I am convinced that humans are always better at imagining scenarios, underlines Madoka Kobayashi, manga artist for more than 30 years. I don’t really see AI as a threat. I rather think that she can be an excellent companion”.
Find our video on this manga of a new kind at the top of the article.