The Four Color Media Monitor

Forbes spoke about the Korea-owned Webtoon company, which is making use of AI technology, but interestingly enough, their spokesman says:

Lee then touched on the big theme of CES 2024: the seemingly inevitable advance of AI into consumer technology.

“We really believe that human creators are the very best storytellers, and sometimes great technology – yes, AI – provides great tools,” said Lee. “Our tools were developed to let human creators create better images faster, but in their own styles. We’re not using technology that generates things solely for the sake of demonstration. Just because an AI can draw a thing or write a thing, it’s not informed by the creativity that comes from a human creator. That’s false promise.”

Lee said Webtoon’s AI investments are primarily on the back end, to aid in discoverability, and, secondarily, to help creators who face daunting workloads be more productive so they can increase their income and cut down on time spent doing lower-value tasks such as coloring.

Lee acknowledged that many creators are highly skeptical of AI due to ethical concerns about how the models were built, as well as the potential threat to the creative industries.

“Changes always create understandable concern,” he said. “It depends on how the technology is used and built. We are careful in developing our AI to work in partnership with creators, using IP that is either fully owned, or provided by supportive creators, or owned by no one in particular in the public domain.”

Let me make a point. AI can be fun if you want to try and get the computer to write or draw something up that you find entertaining, but it shouldn't replace human artwork wholesale. Artists need to prove they can accomplish their missions from A to Z without making use of such technology, and if it could be done in the past, it can be done today too. I suppose there is undoubtably the matter of deadlines for publication. But that's exactly why artists even in today's society have to prove they can take the time to draw up what they believe makes for the best way to tell a story, and even coloring shouldn't be done solely by AI. There was a time when some artists would draw up their art with watercolor paint. Even today, that can have a lot of potential, if an artist wishes, and that's why computer technology shouldn't be replacing the exercise of drawing by hand.

As to the vulnerabilities Webtoon might face in a US political environment hostile to foreign companies or facing tariff barriers, Lee observed that “people like a good story no matter where it comes from” and that Webtoon is a Delaware corporation with headquarters in Los Angeles. “Original content from English-language creators,” including the company’s breakout hit Lore Olympus by New Zealander Rachel Smythe, “is a growth area not just for US consumers, but for consumers around the globe.”

I think it's safe to say such a company wouldn't face tariffs regardless, if only because this is primarily computer based animation they're said to develop, but what's the big idea of saying the USA is opposed to foreign companies working there? Plenty of Japanese car companies like Toyota and Honda still sell there, people are buying their cars and trucks. It's only a matter of building the vehicles mainly in the USA, and giving locals the ability find jobs, is what Donald Trump meant by insisting on domestic production. Where does Forbes get off stooping to that propaganda again?

Good luck to Webtoon with their mission, but I think it's ludicrous to risk encouraging artists to take the easy route rather than challenge their skills for real by keeping on with hand-drawn artwork. Those who take the easy path could risk ending up the least talented. And just look at how Jim Starlin decided to make use of AI for an upcoming book of his. He may be old now, but that's still no excuse.

Labels: animation, Europe and Asia, msm propaganda, sales, technology