Treating artificial intelligence as a taboo in webtoon production should be avoided if the industry aims to boost productivity, industry figures said.
According to the webtoon industry on the 25th, the IP Convergence Industry Association held a forum the previous day in Jongno-gu, Seoul, under the theme "Changes in Korea's Webtoon Industry and the Development of the Content Ecosystem." The event was attended by Suh Beom-gang, chairman of the IP Convergence Industry Association; Chris Turner, vice president of government affairs and public policy for knowledge and information at Google; and Joo Dong-geun, the author of the webtoon "All of Us Are Dead."
"All content industries going forward will develop through convergence," Suh said. "Intellectual property (IP) is no longer a copyright asset circulated only within the content industry, but a platform-type asset that continuously transforms through interaction with the market." He added, "The element that is most dramatically accelerating this change is AI. By meeting with IP, AI is increasing the speed of IP expansion and explosively amplifying the possibilities for variation."
Joo introduced cases in which AI is being usefully applied in actual webtoon production environments. "I mainly use AI to check whether I am plagiarizing another work, or to verify whether the information I want to include in my webtoon is accurate," Joo said. "I work on webtoons six days a week and have no personal life, so I think the era has come when AI is essential for solo creators like me." His argument is that using AI in a supporting role allows solo creators to raise productivity and compete with large studios, achieving a "democratization of creation."
Joo also predicted, "AI will enter the creative process deeply, and through this, another wave of creative works will pour out. But just as good works increase, overwhelming numbers of low-quality content will inevitably flood in as well, and the direction of the AI-powered webtoon market's development will be determined by the level of the output."
Participants also argued that the problem of webtoon quality degradation caused by generative AI will naturally be resolved through readers' choices. "The indiscriminate release of downward-leveled works has been an existing problem, so it should be left to the market," Suh said. Turner added, "Just as using Blackpink's microphone does not allow you to sing like them, the quality of a work is determined by an individual's capability. What determines success is not whether AI is adopted, but the readers' judgment."
Attendees reached a consensus that for AI to be properly used in the creative process, securing creators' rights and enhancing trust in the technology must go hand in hand. "The area AI must address going forward is not a technical issue but one of trust," Suh said. "If we build an AI-use environment that we can trust and feel more secure about, it will help creators bring the ideas they have in mind to reality more quickly and deliver good works to the world."
Turner cited SynthID, an AI watermarking technology that Google DeepMind provides as open source, as an example, stressing that the company will actively reflect concerns from the creative field. "The power of AI can only be fully realized when we protect the voices of creators while also building trust in AI tools," he said. "We will reflect concerns from the field in Google's technology and contribute to creating a better creative environment."
