Japan's laws allow the use of copyrighted content to train AI models. Even though artists are worried for their future, some of the country's cultural and social aspects might make it easier to accept AI.
Much of the animation takes place outside Japan these days. If you watch enough recent anime end credits, you’ll see a lot of what look like romanized Vietnamese names. And there was a scandal . . . about a year ago now? . . . when some material for an anime then in production was found on the server of a North Korean studio (probably because a Chinese studio to which the anime had been outsourced then outsourced it further without paying attention to little things like international treaties). And I don’t think the teams remaining in Japan have any shortage of recruits.
This issue, as with any business, is “can AI produce more for cheaper at an acceptable quality?” If it does make real inroads, it’ll be the outsourcing studios doing the less-important scenes that get replaced first.
Much of the animation takes place outside Japan these days. If you watch enough recent anime end credits, you’ll see a lot of what look like romanized Vietnamese names. And there was a scandal . . . about a year ago now? . . . when some material for an anime then in production was found on the server of a North Korean studio (probably because a Chinese studio to which the anime had been outsourced then outsourced it further without paying attention to little things like international treaties). And I don’t think the teams remaining in Japan have any shortage of recruits.
This issue, as with any business, is “can AI produce more for cheaper at an acceptable quality?” If it does make real inroads, it’ll be the outsourcing studios doing the less-important scenes that get replaced first.