Generative AI is reshaping South Korea’s webcomics industry
1 min read
Summary
Generative AI is charting a new frontier within the web comics industry in South Korea, and veteran cartoonist Lee Hyun-se partnered with AI to immortalise his characters, wanting them to “stay alive” after his death.
Lee prepared to publish his first AI-assisted webcomic, a remake of his 1994 ‘manhwa’ ‘Karon’s Dawn’, with students at Sejong University creating the artwork, and an AI model generating illustrations based on text prompts before the students edit the work.
The web comic aims to be an “experiment” with the grand vision of creating a “Lee Hyun-se simulation agent” - an advanced generation of his AI model that replicates his creative mind, trained on digital archives of his works.
Meanwhile, last year a group of young web comic artists created ‘Tarot: A Tale of Seven Pages’ using Onoma AI’s TooToon software, with the company’s founder and CEO Song Min hopeful that AI will help to “empower more artists to emerge as independent artists.