Japan is planning to combat anime and manga piracy using artificial intelligence (AI), aiming to curb the billions of dollars in annual revenue losses attributed to these illegal activities.
According to a group of Japanese publishers, more than 1,000 websites offer free, unauthorized downloads of Japanese content, particularly manga, which enjoys global popularity.
Under a proposed pilot program costing 300 million yen ($2 million), Tokyo’s cultural agency plans to deploy AI to identify pirated content online. This system will use image and text detection technology to scour the internet for unauthorized copies of manga and anime.
“Copyright-holders spend a significant amount of human resources trying to manually detect pirated content online,” cultural agency official Keiko Momii told AFP. Despite these efforts, human moderators struggle to keep up with the sheer volume of new illegal content.
The initiative is part of the agency’s supplementary budget request for the fiscal year ending in March and takes inspiration from a similar project implemented in South Korea. If successful, it could extend to other types of copyrighted media, such as films and music.
Japan, known for iconic franchises like Dragon Ball, Super Mario, and Final Fantasy, views its creative industries as vital economic drivers, comparable to steel and semiconductor production.
In its updated “Cool Japan” strategy released in June, the government set a goal of increasing cultural exports to 20 trillion yen ($130 billion) by 2033.
Approximately 70% of pirating websites that distribute Japanese content operate in languages such as English, Chinese, and Vietnamese, according to publishers. Despite this, Japan’s gaming, anime, and manga industries collectively earned 4.7 trillion yen ($30 billion) from international markets in 2022, nearly rivaling microchip exports valued at 5.7 trillion yen, government data shows.
The AI initiative underscores Japan’s commitment to protecting its cultural assets and supporting its creative industries on the global stage.