AI anime flood: An infringement investigation of 90,000 images by Nikkei Asia

This is a story about the relationship between Japanese anime and rapidly evolving generative artificial intelligence (AI). Nikkei's investigation unveiled that many anime images suspected of copyright infringement are produced by the misuse of image generative AI.

After investigating approximately 90,000 images on three major image-sharing websites, we found about 2,500 images that resemble original images in multiple ways. These images include characters like Pikachu, Mario and Luffy, figures from major Japanese anime that are known worldwide and highly profitable. When analyzing the prompts used in generating the images, the character names had been entered for around 90% of the images, strengthening the suspicion that users had created similar images with intent to copy the characters.

Japanese anime has long faced challenges from copyright infringement. In the past, piracy posed a major threat, and now the rise of generative AI is presenting new risks to the industry. With the supervision of attorney who is knowledgeable about copyright, our investigation team confirmed the high possibility of illegality.

In this investigation, Nikkei analyzed images posted to three image-sharing websites. They were civitai, pixai.art and seaart.ai. Anime for the investigation were selected from the top 10 in cumulative IP revenue through 2019 and the top 10 in terms of the number of viewers in 2022. We analyed approximately 90,000 images collected from these sites through undocumented APIs.

A lawyer specialized in copyright law viewed the results of Nikkei's investigation and confirmed that "there are many images that infringe on copyrights mixed in." He also said that "there are a massive amount of generated images, and it is difficult to deal with them (through the legal system)," highlighting the serious risk of infringement on the copyrights of Japanese anime. Further more our investigation also found that the AI was trained on anime through the illegal distribution of pirated versions, an issue that has long plagued Japan's contents industries.