A new episode of Osamu Tezuka’s famous manga “Black Jack” has been created with the help of artificial intelligence and is in production for release this fall. 50th anniversary of the start of the series.
According to project organizers, the AI-generated manga will be published in Weekly Shonen Champion.
A project team consisting of Tezuka Productions and AI researcher Satoshi Kurihara, professor of engineering at Keio University, explained the basic concept at a Tokyo press conference on June 12.
This cartoon series about a genius but unlicensed surgeon ran for over 200 episodes in a comic anthology from November 1973 to October 1983.
“Black Jack” is one of the masterpieces of Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), who is called the “god of manga”.
The team had the AI learn entire episodes and sometimes create new episodes with the help of human creators.
The idea of using AI to create Tezuka-style manga started in 2019. It was born from the idea of ”What would you draw if you were still alive and drawing manga?”
In 2020, an AI program that studied the work devised a rough story outline and original character design for the new work “Pai Don”.
Kurihara, who was a member of the project at the time, was immersed in research with his colleagues.
It is said that the members of “Pai Don” wrote the content of the story and drew illustrations.
AI is also being used to support current creative endeavors, but through interactive interaction with AI, team members can fine-tune AI-generated scenarios to give them a more natural flow. can.
You can also create illustrations with lines that reproduce the style of Osamu Tezuka using image generation AI.
Mr. Tezuka’s son Makoto, who is the director of Tezuka Productions, came up with the idea of creating a new “Black Jack” episode.
“(The original series) has a complicated story structure and many episodes while reflecting the essence of Osamu Tezuka,” he said at a press conference. “It’s a high hurdle, but I thought it would be worth trying.”
“Although I accept criticism, I hope that our efforts will lead to a discussion of a broader range of ideas,” he said.
