Naver Webtoon ready to 'fully incorporate AI' into company, department lead says

An image created by generative AI program Deep AI with the prompt, "A cartoon strip of panels, robot painters and human painters competing" [DEEP AI]

 
AI always seems to sound like a villain when it comes to art, whether it be due to copyright issues or the very fundamental fear of job losses. Some people even worry that “untalented people” will be able to cause chaos in the art field by using AI to assist them, tarnishing the sanctity of artistic creation.
 
These concerns may be legitimate to some extent, but they may also be quite exaggerated, according to Kim Dae-sik, the webtoon AI and data lead at Naver Webtoon, Korea’s largest webtoon company. In fact, it all comes down to what programs we humans develop and how we use them as tools to enhance our own creativity, he says. “The biggest difference with AI creation and human creation is that machines don’t have any intentions of their own."
 

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“What that means is that it always needs us to tell it what to do. It doesn't suddenly become inspired and start making its own work. Everything it has learned, it has learned from what we made. But the urge to create something has been and will always remain an innate aspect of humanity — the motivation without which creation doesn’t even take place.”
 
Naver Webtoon’s parent company, Webtoon Entertainment, went public on the Nasdaq on June 28, 2024, as the first Korean web content company to do so in the United States. Webtoon Entertainment also owns Japanese webtoon and manga service Line Manga and web novel platforms Wattpad and Munpia.
 
As a company leading the web content industry in the global market, Naver Webtoon has rolled out the AI Painter tool to help webtoonists streamline their illustrations, AI curation to give recommendations to each user’s taste and online piracy detection system Toon Radar to prevent and combat illegal content circulation.
 

Kim Dae-sik, the Webtoon AI & Data Lead at Naver Webtoon [NAVER WEBTOON]

 
Being fully aware of the general concerns over AI technology from consumers, Naver Webtoon has been focusing on easing the public into the idea of AI through approachable services, such as the camera filter, Toon Filter, that turns a selfie into a webtoon illustration and the Character Chat, which allows users to have an online one-on-one chat with characters from the webtoons, all powered by AI.
 
“There are a lot of things that we’re working on, but we hope to present some visible results within this year,” Kim said. “The essence lies in solving the issues that arise from the creative process of the authors. We’re working on unraveling the heavy load of labor that falls on the webtoonists.”
 
Kim sat down for an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily to talk more about Naver Webtoon’s AI strategy moving forward and to address the concerns people may have regarding the fast-growing technology. The following are excerpts of the interview, edited for length and clarity.
 
 

The Toon Filter AI camera service developed by Naver Webtoon [NAVER WEBTOON]

Q. What is the main direction of Naver Webtoon’s AI development strategy?


A. Our two main pillars are content protection and enhancing authors’ creativity. The core of our company lies in our intellectual property (IP), which is why our services are centered on supporting that very IP. We built the AI and data team so that we don’t just sprinkle a little bit of AI here and there, but to fully incorporate AI into the fundamentals of the company.
 
When it comes to webtoonists, our primary goal is to preserve the intentions and creativity of the authors. Intentions cannot be made or replaced. What we can do for them is to help make their process more efficient by replacing the repetitive labor or actions that they must go through in order to express that intention — for instance, by reducing the number of clicks by half.
 
For the readers, we always aim to attract new readers, but our focus right now is on retaining the existing readers. It’s easier to target the consumers that we already have through the data we’ve already gained, for example, with services like the Character Chat, which would appeal more to people who already have their favorite characters. But we’re still in talks to develop items that appeal to a wider audience.
 

A scene from Naver Webtoon series "The Knight King who returned with the God" (translated, 2023-), suspected of using AI [SCREEN CAPTURE]

The scene from Naver Webtoon series "The Knight King who returned with the God" (translated, 2023-), suspected of using AI changed [SCREEN CAPTURE]

A lot of the concerns regarding AI always seem to be that AI technology may replace creators, and ultimately humans’ creative roles. Do you think this is a plausible theory?
 
Yes, AI could generate more results. The same thing happened once before when cartoonists started working on digital tablets instead of paper, but it eventually allowed webtoonists to create more in the same amount of time. People are scared of AI because it’s faster than them, but we’re on the course of progress. Once people adapt, those who use it well will show a higher level of productivity and more people will opt to do the same.
 
The thing about AI is that it outputs what is inserted in the prompt. But creation isn’t linear. In creation, you could input one thing, and 100 could come out.
 
I believe that every new technology is bound to go through a similar process. There will always be people ready to utilize a new method as well as people who feel reluctant to accept the side effects. But as a tech company, it is also our duty to come up with a way of making people feel as least uncomfortable as we can.  
 

Fans line up for the sign event of Naver Webtoon's webtoonists during the New York Comic Con 2024 held in the New York City on Oct. 18, 2024. [YONHAP]

Graphics for the online comics platform Webtoon Entertainment are displayed in Times Square as the company holds an IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., June 27, 2024. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

What would be Naver Webtoon’s strong point amid the competition?
 
Our goal is to protect the webtoonist ecosystem and minimize the risk regarding readers’ resistance toward AI. And we don’t think it’s a bad thing.
 
It may seem like we’re restricting ourselves by taking a somewhat conservative approach, but when it comes to AI, we’re already taking a certain amount of risk, and that may always lead to some kind of controversy. But we’re a company that works very closely with our creators, and we show a great potential for what we can achieve in the future.
 
Technology will become more refined and safer as the days go by and will also become more efficient for users. The key to achieving this will lie in communication with the users of the service, something we are good at. We’re also a company that possesses a great amount of data, and we’re using that resource to develop a good service for the market.

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]