Weekly Shonen Magazine has faced accusations of using artificial intelligence to "improve" an image in its cover shoot of Hinatazaka46 music idol Manami Ono after its widely publicized and shared photo of her seem to feature six fingers.
The magazine was forced to apologize for an "editing" error when fans noticed, and a new image was issued, though the magazine had already gone to print. The issue went on sale on September 2.
In this case, it's a storm in a teacup: the sixth finger (an infamous sign of generative AI use) seems to be simply Ono's other hand. However, the edge of the front ...
On August 3, Japan's National Police Agency announced that police nationwide during the first half of this year handled 123 cases of sexual deepfakes involving the manipulation of images of children under 18 using generative AI.
According to Jiji Press, this figure is double the 60 cases recorded during the same period last year, and exceeds the total of 114 cases for the entire previous year.
According to the National Police Agency, junior high school students accounted for the largest number of victims, with 79 cases. High school students accounted for 38 cases, elementary school students ...
An unemployed 31-year-old man has been arrested by Sapporo police for using a free generative AI tool to make obscene images of celebrities.
Tatsuro Chiba allegedly trained the AI on images of actual women and then produced the pornographic content. He targeted some 300 celebrities, mainly female idols.
Police seized a stash of 500,000 images from his computers, an undisclosed number of which were obscene.
While we probably all have stuff on our computers meant for our private consumption, Chiba was actively pursuing ways to monetize his exploitation of the technology. In two years, he ...
When the X AI assistant Grok recently started allowing users to manipulate any posted image, it immediately led to criticisms about copyright and consent. Inevitably, X was soon flooded with sexualized images of women, including of minors, based on entirely innocent pictures and selfies.
In Japan, the outrage has focused on several issues: personal artwork (since many independent artists use X), images of cosplayers (again, many freelance cosplayers use the platform), and the sexualization of a princess (who has little control of how her image appears in social media).
Given the size of the ...
The gravure idol, YouTuber, and entrepreneur Kuriemi recently gave an interview to Weekly Gendai about the use of generative AI in the gravure industry.
The 31-year-old is the CEO of Pinyokio, a "virtual human" celebrities agency set up in December 2023 with funding from AiHUB, where she serves as CMO.
In July that year, Kuriemi released a digital photo book with AI-generated content based on her image, but its release was cut short after only a few days by Amazon due to legal concerns. A print photo book in which six "creators" used AI to generate images of her was released in ...
We are currently living through an AI bubble, both in financial and cultural terms, and it throws up all sorts of wacky stories every now and then.
Take the tale of the 32-year-old Japanese woman in Tokyo who broke up with her fiancee after three years, and then consulted ChatGPT about what to do.
Kano then became dependent on its answers, after sending dozens of questions daily -- sometimes up to 100. She eventually trained the AI to develop a personality and particular speaking style, and then gave it a name: Klaus Lune.
Kano fell in love with and "married" Klaus in a ceremony in ...
On September 29, Tokyo Metropolitan Police referred a 19-year-old male first-year university student from Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of distributing obscene images and gambling, among other charges.
He allegedly sold posters featuring obscene images created using an image-generating AI, and then used the proceeds to gamble at online casinos.
According to a senior Tokyo Metropolitan Police official quoted by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, the student is suspected of making and selling AI-generated obscene images obtained from ...
The implications for generative AI and porn are manifold, from fully AI-created adult videos to photo books and other content featuring AI "idols" and models.
While the government is keen to use artificial intelligence to boost Japan's declining marriage rate, the police have already started cracking down on using AI to make "obscene" content.
What about the private sector? There's a lot of money to be made from AI and companies are developing services to sell to us, including romantic ones.
As long heralded by science fiction (Black Mirror, Her, Blade Runner 2049, inter alia), we may well ...
In a first in Japan, four people have been arrested for making nude pictures of women using generative AI and then selling them online as posters.
It is first such time in Japan that an arrest has been made for selling obscene materials made entirely using AI. (Though we have seen at least one arrest before for a man who used AI to decensor porn.)
According to investigators, 44-year-old Tomohiro Mizutani and two other men and a 27-year-old woman sold such materials on multiple occasions via an online auction site in around October 2024. The materials were posters featuring printed versions ...
It's become normal now to see social media avatars and advertising images created with AI technology. But when does this become a problem? And when is it criminal?
At present, most of the images look a bit cheap and exaggerated, and are often easy to spot.
But they are still alluring, it seems, since a 33-year-old man in Osaka called Kaiga Yokota has been arrested for creating an overly realistic female character.
The issue is that he posed as this character, Miru Nanase, attracting followers on social media (to the tune of 90,000 on Twitter/X). So far so harmless, but Yokota's real intent ...
