Shock waves shook the South Korean media world when it was reported in February that a translator had used an artificial intelligence tool to win a digital comic award in a major competition. 

The winner of the Rookie of the Year prize in the webtoon category at an award hosted by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) was a Japanese woman who barely understands Korean, according to the evening daily Munhwa Ilbo and other outlets.

She used an AI-assisted translation app called Papago for a preliminary Japanese version of a Korean webtoon before fixing technical terms and awkward expressions.

LTI Korea told The Asahi Shimbun that it learned about the use of Papago through media reports after the organization had chosen the recipient.

The institute considered stripping the award.

But when officials compared the winning work with the original text Papago had translated, they acknowledged that the recipient had worked hard from multiple perspectives based on her understanding of the characters to exemplify the merits of the webtoon, such as the rhythmical wording of dialogue and frame compositions.

They concluded there was no need to withdraw the award, saying the recipient’s hard work and cultural understanding are reflected in her work.

The news stunned the translation industry in Japan.

“I speak both Japanese and Korean, but I also use Papago as a reference,” said Kim Seung-bok, head of Cuon Inc., a Tokyo-based publisher specializing in Korean books that also co-hosts a translation contest. “I think an outright denial of AI is the same as a denial of civilization.”

However, Kim is troubled as to how she should handle AI-assisted translations for the next contest, which will start accepting submissions from September.

“The contest is aimed at measuring how well contestants can use literary expressions in their works,” she said. “We can’t put much energy into checking whether an AI-translation service was used.”

NEW TECHNOLOGY MAKING INROADS

The art community is not immune to the rise of AI, with some creators confused by its sudden presence while others are thrilled by new opportunities it offers. 

Either way, creators seemingly have no choice but to explore ways to work with the rapidly evolving AI technology.

Some artists are actively using AI to inspire their creativity.

Claiming to be “Japan’s first short film written by AI,” “Boy Sprouted” was streamed as part of an international film festival last year.

“The finished movie was completely different from what we had imagined at first,” said Hiroshi Itsuki, who developed a story-generative AI system called “Furukoto,” which was used to write the screenplay.

Initially, the engineer thought the AI would write an entire story based on a simple logline a human user would provide.

But because it would be difficult to achieve commercial viability if the AI produces artistic pieces that are difficult to understand, he fed the AI classic stories about a relationship between a boy and his family being restored.

Hiroki Tawada, who co-wrote the script with Furukoto, admitted the AI was capable of creating many stories in a short time, before adding, “It is quite stressful to carefully read each text (the AI) produced and determine its value.”

While he was working on the script, his attention went to a strange sentence included in a vast number of texts the AI had produced: “Shonen, Nanika-ga Hatsuga-suru” (A boy, something sprouts).

The director and the producer also showed interest in the sentence.

Production members were excited about the unexpected output and expanded how they could interpret it, such as that it could be referring to a dawning sense of self.

Placing the sentence as impossible for most humans to conceive at the core of the creative process, Tawada had the AI repeatedly produce sentences that could be used for the scenes before and after the manifestation of the core concept and let it write the story.

"I changed my mind, thinking that it might be better, for the time being, for humans to work together with AI to produce creative works,” Itsuki said.

HELP WITH AN OPERA

Performer and composer Tomomi Adachi had an AI write the libretto for his opera “Romeo will juliet,” which premiered in 2021.

He had barely composed music with lyrics because he was cautious about how music might amplify emotions evoked by the words and because he was uncomfortable being easily affected by such emotions.

But Adachi said he could detach himself from words generated by the AI based on Shakespeare’s classic play because he felt he was confronted with a question: “What are emotions anyway?”

“I could compose the opera thanks to this method,” he said.

While it is feared that AI could replace many jobs in the cultural field and standardize creative output, Adachi emphasized its possibilities.

“Humans are already affected by the algorithms of AI in some way or other. So, instead of warning about it, I want to take a chance on the possibility that it will expand our perceptions,” he said. “I want AI to create something we never could.”

(This article was written by Mayumi Mori, Masato Nishida and Aiko Masuda.)