Black Jack, the classic manga series of the legendary Osamu Tezuka; known as the manga god, is producing a new chapter entirely AI-generated to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the original manga. The new Black Jack series, co-produced by Tezuka Productions, will feature Macoto Tezka, the son of the original series author.
Over the past few months, AI has made a big splash in the anime and manga industry, with various small projects created to try to show some of the possibilities using AI technologies like ChatGPT. The upcoming AI-generated Black Jack manga will be published in Akita Shoten’s Weekly Shonen Champion magazine this fall as part of the TEZUKA2023 project.
Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack follows the titular character of a mysterious unlicensed doctor who travels the world treating rare diseases and selling his expertise to the highest bidder. With incredible surgical prowess and vast medical knowledge, Black Jack healed people from different conditions.
The concept of the character was to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Tezuka’s manga career. The original manga was published in 25 volumes from November 1973 to October 1984. Behind the Astro Boys, Black Jack is the second best-known work by Osamu Tezuka, a character seen by some as Tezuka’s alter ego; an exploration of his medical background by the author, who is a practicing physician . The series spawned various adaptations, including several animated series and an OVA, as well as a live-action film.
The artificial intelligence that will make the 2023 version of Black Jack is based on ChatGPT-4, using technology developed by Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization NEDO in collaboration with Keio University’s Faculty of Science and Technology Prof. Satoshi Kurihara.
This upcoming Black Jack project follows the TEZUKA2020 project, which saw the production of Paidon, a manga series that grew out of an AI trying to learn the style of Osamu Tezuka. Black Jack 2023 is set to release this fall, just a few months after the release of Cyberpunk: Peach John, Japan’s first fully AI-generated manga, which was released in March and was created entirely by AI tools such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. The Image Composition. Understandably, the advent of artificial intelligence in the industry has sparked a barrage of criticism from fans and artists alike, while many interpret it as a tool that should be embraced, not thwarted.