Rent A Girlfriend author using AI leaves fans conflicted

On Tuesday, March 26, 2024, Rent A Girlfriend manga creator, Reiji Miyajima, revealed that he was interested in AI (artificial intelligence). He used his own artworks to teach the AI model his art style, using which he generated an illustration of Rent A Girlfriend female lead, Chizuru Ichinose.

Rent A Girlfriend, written and illustrated by Miyajima, is a Japanese manga series that began serialization in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine in July 2017. Since then, the series has been compiled into 35 volumes and has received three seasons of anime adaptations.

Rent A Girlfriend manga creator uses AI to generate an illustration of Ichinose

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On Tuesday, March 26, 2024, Rent A Girlfriend manga creator Reiji Miyajima shared an AI-generated illustration of his manga's female lead Ichinose Chizuru through his X (formerly Twitter) account @Miyajimareiji.

He revealed how he was seemingly getting interested in AI recently and had trained the AI model using his own art to generate an image of Ichinose. He was happy with the result and shared the image online to see what his fans thought about it.

Evidently, the image did resemble Ichinose Chizuru. However, it appears to have lacked the originality brought by the manga creator's real artworks.

How fans reacted to the AI-generated image of Chizuru

Ichinose Chizuru as seen in Rent A Girlfriend (Image via Kodansha)

The majority of fans were disappointed at the manga creator as using AI to draw art was quite scorned by people. This is because several artists spend loads of time working on their own artworks.

"I hope this doesn't have an impact on future comic content"

In the meantime, "AI artists" make use of tools to cheat their way out. Fans therefore wished that the manga creator refrain from using AI in the future.

Meanwhile, other fans began worrying about the manga series' future. They believe that there had to be a reason why Reiji Miyajima trained an AI model to generate illustrations by studying his artworks. Fans were worried that the creator would soon use AI in their manga as well.

"It's a tool that was originally taught by using a large amount of copyrighted material, so it's not just about "my own drawings.''"

Mami Nanami as seen in Rent A Girlfriend (Image via Kodansha)

One fan explained how training an AI model by using only one's own art is nearly impossible. The AI model uses data from large amounts of copyrighted material to learn drawing. Thus, training an AI with a particular artist's work did not mean much in the large scheme.

"Yea this is ethical and lessens workload but disheartening 😞 We’ll always be guessing which ones are hand drawn which ones are AI now"

In Japan, there is seemingly no law against the use of AI artworks. Therefore the manga creator using AI after training it through his own artwork seemed ethical to people.

Several fans were hoping that the usage of AI would lessen the manga creator's workload, allowing him to spend more time with his friends and family. Meanwhile, other Japanese fans were really bothered by how Western fans did not like the usage of AI. They believed that using AI helped manga creators relieve some stress, helping them create a manga for a much longer time.