In Japan, as everywhere, there is push for AI regulations, and specifically in the world of Anime. Working conditions in the Anime workforce are notoriously poor and with the advent of Gen AI and leveraging it in the anime world, crappier content and even worse working conditions are likely to follow. Corporations (like Crunchyroll) push to save money and maximize profits by cutting out the worker, yes it creates horrible and stupid and not relatable content … but it’s practically free! Anyway, they forgot a cardinal rule in life: Never mess with the Anime Community. Seriously, they will come for you. We wrote a blog post about two “AI entrepreneurs” who made AI variations of anime characters — same characters but in still that didn’t exist, printed them, and were selling them by hand on the street — they were found, arrested, and are now in jail. Again, don’t mess with the Anime Community.
PS Gen AI featured image “don’t mess with the Anime community” brought to you by “I’m guessing this is straight up copying an existing IP since it was created on ChatGPT”.
