Photo/Illutration The Nov. 22 edition of Weekly Shonen Champion features a new episode of Osamu Tezuka’s “Black Jack,” created with the help of artificial intelligence. (Kenro Kuroda)

A new episode of “Black Jack,” a masterpiece of famed manga artist Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), has been completed with the help of artificial intelligence, 40 years after the last one was published. 

The new 32-page story, titled “TEZUKA2023 Black Jack: A Machine Heart–Heartbeat Mark II,” will be released Nov. 22 in Weekly Shonen Champion.

Makoto Tezuka, the artist’s son and director of Tezuka Productions Co., acknowledged the controversy surrounding generative AI, including concerns over copyright violation and job displacement for artists.

“I know not everyone will be happy with the project, but I hope this stimulates further discussions on the creative applications of AI,” he said.

The new episode was created by a project team led by Tezuka Productions and Satoshi Kurihara, an AI expert and a professor of engineering at Keio University.

Featuring a genius but unlicensed surgeon, the manga series ran in the comic anthology between November 1973 and October 1983 for more than 200 episodes.

“Black Jack” is one of the most famous works of Tezuka, often hailed as “the godfather of manga.”

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of its creation, the team taught the AI the entire series to create a new episode with the helping hand of human creators.

In the latest episode, the protagonist helps a patient who has blood tumors that formed on an AI-supported artificial heart implanted in her body.

Using GPT-4 chatbot and the image-generating program Stable Diffusion, project team members for the latest episode interacted with AI to determine the story and character designs, upon which manga artists crafted the illustrations.

The idea of an artificial heart, which plays a key role in the story, and the phrase “Heartbeat Mark II” were suggested by AI, according to the project team.

“One of the stories generated by AI explored the theme of the dignity of human life,” Makoto said. “This resonated with Tezuka’s manga because the theme is one of the central ideas behind his works.”

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