DLE President and CEO Ryo Ono has expressed a negative view on introducing AI into anime production at this stage. He noted that while high-quality anime generation AI from Chinese companies has emerged and reached a level where it can reproduce character expressions from specific works, challenges for adoption in the Japanese market include resistance to storing IP data on overseas servers and high implementation costs. He argued that precisely because of the AI era, the value of hand-drawn work should be elevated as a brand, and that the value of individual creators and works that can only be born in Japan should be differentiating factors. He also stated that the strength of Japanese anime lies in the entire ecosystem from original content supply to overseas sales, and that applying AI to business aspects is more important than automating the production process. He suggested that Chinese companies are adopting AI not for cost reduction but with the idea of industry development, aiming to replicate the Japanese-style production system.
DLE, Inc.CEO expresses negative view on AI in anime production, which may signal reluctance to adopt cost-saving technology, potentially harming competitiveness.