Using AI to Research Manga

Hey gang! I’m currently working on a new “Back to the Vaults” post for a popular manga series. I won’t spoil what it is (some will easily guess though).

That said, I was doing research and ended up going down a rabbit hole I’d not intended. To help me quickly find stuff, I figured I’d use an AI (Grok to be specific, since I’ve had better luck with it than other AI software). And while Grok was somewhat helpful, it quickly became clear that AI software has a LONG way to go, especially on manga research.

Further, I came to understand that AI software will crippled forever when it comes to research, thanks to current copyright laws. In my specific case, the manga attempted to cite chapters where things happened. However, when I looked them up, the AI was either way wrong, kinda wrong (correct volume, but incorrect chapter), or mostly correct. But even in the correct instances, it could get confused.

The reason for this is that AI does not have access to the primary sources. So say I was researching Frieren, the AI could be fairly accurate about things, but it would not know specifics because it doesn’t have a copy of the original Japanese text nor the official English translation. The AI can only go to secondary and other hearsay sources due to copyright laws.

Should AI Have Access to Primary Sources?

The advantage an AI has in research is that it can scan all kinds of online sources and provide information based on what it scrapes from said sources. So in theory, this can be valuable to speed up research, providing it reveals its sourcing.

In my case, I wanted information on chapters where a certain character was featured. If the AI could provide me an accurate list of chapters, I could then go and read the chapters myself. Unfortunately, the AI doesn’t have the text of the chapters. It has Reddit posts, Tweets, or even blogs like mine, where a summary of a chapter is provided. Therefore, when Grok gave me some chapters, many proved to be incorrect.

While I was able to update Grok with correct information, it made me wonder if AI should have access to primary sources. This would be beneficial in manga research. For a start, if you found some English translation of a manga to be suss, you could have the AI can the original Japanese passage and provide a translation breakdown. That would be amazing.

Another case would be my own research, where I wanted to see the chapters a certain character was mentioned in. If the AI could rapidly scan all chapters in seconds, it could tell me precisely what I need to know, saving me tons of time. AI could be restricted from reciting whole pages to avoid copyright concerns, but allowed to quote stuff in the name of fair usage.

Final Thoughts

I doubt Big Entertainment or most other creators will allow AI to have a complete library of works, whether fictional or not. As such, AI will never be at the level of a computer from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Thus AI will never be all that useful when it comes to research.