Stability AI and Anime Chain Consider Conducting Joint Research into Generative AI for the Anime Industry

Today, Stability AI Japan, the developer of “Stable Diffusion XL” that created a trend in generative AI, and Anime Chain LLC, a joint venture established by AI and blockchain experts in Japan, announced their consideration of jointly researching generative AI for the anime industry.

The tools to support production considered in this joint research aim to maximize animators’ creativity by deeply learning the animation from the production process and understanding the animator’s intentions. Unlike existing AI and generative AI, this tool does not deprive jobs as an automatic drawing machine but instead supports the production process and maximizes the creator’s creativity.
By maintaining the anime production process as it is, the tool will adjust different work formats between 2D and 3D, and assist by finding and instructing corrections to drawing errors. This will free animators from tedious tasks and allow them to realize their ideas freely. Furthermore, the tool will support the education of new animators and encourage the improvement of production skills, thus contributing to the development of the whole industry.

The joint development of support tools to improve the quality of anime works starts in Spring 2024, and by directly listening to the people in production through the “Anime Chain Council,” we will conduct our research and development based on appropriate guidelines.

Please check out the latest information on our X accounts and FAQ page.

Japanese: https://x.com/anime_chain_jp
Global: https://x.com/anime_chain
FAQ: https://note.com/animechain/n/n78027dd3a1d9

■What is the “Anime Chain Initiative”?

This initiative aims to expand the content ecosystem, set up an environment where creators can continually engage in production, and maximize their earnings.

① Setting up an environment safe and secure for creators
With our goal to respect creators’ rights, we will provide a generative AI rebuilt from the foundation model utilizing opt-in material that has received the consent of the rights holders, along with related tools. Furthermore, in order to ensure the transparency and legitimacy of the generative AI, we will record the development process on the blockchain. This approach aims to address both copyright and ethical issues related to generative AI.

② Resolving the labor shortage in the content industry
Despite the increasing global demand, the Japanese content industry, especially anime, faces a labor shortage in production. To address this urgent situation, we believe adopting generative AI with a legitimate lineage by utilizing the blockchain is essential. Our goal is to create an environment where quality content can be produced more swiftly, even with limited personnel, preventing industry stagnation due to labor shortage and striving for sustainable growth.

③ Maximizing creator earnings
We envision sharing the earnings from the content produced by generative AI not only to the creators but also to the rights holders of the training data based on the history of generation recorded on the blockchain. By disclosing the production process of the keyframes and images used for training data, creators can maximize their earnings, allowing them to focus more on creative production.

■ Vision

The vision of this initiative is to foster healthy growth in Japan’s esteemed entertainment content, such as anime, manga, games, and VTubers, enhancing its sustainability.

In order to expand the content ecosystem even further, we will cooperate with future partners to provide products and services in areas currently not covered in the industry as a whole, such as actively advertising anime characters, matching content with advertising clients, supporting marketing for localizing, and collecting fan feedback.

We aim to expand our network of colleagues by incentivizing supporting partners and contributors through unique ecosystem tokens or similar methods and achieve our vision as soon as possible.

■ Feedback on the “Anime Chain Initiative”

The “Anime Chain Initiative” was born in response to the specific insights gathered from active professionals in the content industry. We plan to update the initiative based on feedback not only from industry professionals and related companies but also from creators and fans. We welcome your candid opinions to help realize a better vision. Please share your thoughts with us on X (formerly Twitter) using the hashtag #AnimeChain.

Stability AI Japan

Stability AI develops open-model generative AI with the mission of “building a global foundation to activate humanity’s potential.” They released their co-developed image generation model “Stable Diffusion” in August 2022, which led to an explosion of generative AI use worldwide. They are currently working on the development of audio generation, video generation, 3D generation, and large language models. In order to develop models for Japan, they established their Japan branch in January 2023.

Website: https://ja.stability.ai/
Official X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/StabilityAI