Japan to use AI to tackle online manga and anime piracy [Video]

Japan is planning to use AI to police anime and manga pirating websites that the pop-culture powerhouse accuses of costing it billions of dollars in lost revenue every year.

There are at least 1,000 websites illegally offering free downloads of Japanese content, mostly its globally-renowned manga graphic novels, a group of domestic publishers claimed earlier this year.

But under a 300 million yen ($2 million) pilot scheme proposed by Tokyo’s cultural agency, AI will scour the web for sites pirating manga books and anime cartoons, using an image and text detection system.

“Copyright-holders spend a significant amount of human resources trying to manually detect pirated content online,” cultural agency official Keiko Momii told AFP on Tuesday.

But human moderators can “barely keep up” with constantly proliferating illegal content, the agency said in a written document.

The initiative features in the agency’s supplementary budget request for this fiscal year ending in …