Immediately after San Diego Comic-Con, former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick announced with great fanfare a platform called Lumi that promises to “free writers and democratize storytelling” by leveraging “advanced AI tools that enable writers to make their stories authentic.”
Investors like Alex Ohanasian’s Six Seven Six, Kapor Capital, Impellent Ventures and a whole host of Silicon Valley executives were excited, providing $4 million in seed money. The founders were less enthusiastic. In fact, the company and Kaepernick personally were attacked fiercely online, despite his truly admirable stance against racism, which cost him dearly during his football career.
Turns out, Kaepernick was just the first player to be flushed out of the bag and subjected to a massive attack. Several other companies are launching similar offerings that probably look great in the pitch deck but may be received differently in the marketplace.
Dashtoon announces an ambitious partnership with an AI twist. San Francisco-based Dashtoon is an emerging platform that launched in January and follows the webtoon model: mobile-first, vertically scrolling comics, user-generated content and connections to the red-hot Korean pop culture industry.
Today, the company announces a global partnership with the Korea Webtoon Industry Association to expand K-content to markets in the US, India and other parts of South Asia, expanding an existing relationship with Google Play.
Selling webtoons in India is a great idea! The country is full of pop culture-obsessed young people, has good mobile connectivity, and despite extreme poverty, boasts hundreds of millions of aspiring middle-class consumers. I literally wrote a book in 2010 about the promise of these kinds of markets, so I welcome companies willing to take the (not insignificant) risks that such a move entails.
But… “Dashtoon and KWIA member companies plan to collaborate and produce AI-powered webtoons.” Gulp.
“Dashtoon is committed to Democratization comic creation by empowering individual creators and small webtoon studios to offer diverse, high-quality content to our readers worldwide,” said Lalith Gudipati, COO and co-founder of Dashtoon. (Emphasis added.)
When I asked for clarification on this point, a company spokesperson replied, “Dashtoon Studio is a tool for artists, not something that will replace them. The company employs over 300 artists in-house and also partners with comic studios from around the world to create comics. All scripting and storyboarding is done manually, and AI tools are used to generate images and make edits. They have developed something that streamlines the creation workflow and increases productivity, a big reason why the company has interest from several top comic publishers to scale production. The MoU signed with KWIA is an example of this.”
VoyceMe raises $10 million to produce manga and webtoons with… guess what… This week also saw an announcement from another relatively new webtoon/manga creator platform, VoyceMe. The company says it has increased its readership by 1000% since 2023, which, frankly, could mean anything. But who needs customers when you have investors like Redpoint Ventures, Torch Capital, and others writing $10 million checks, infatuated by the $1.7 billion valuation Webtoon has after its IPO in July 2024.
VoyceMe, whose leadership team includes some notable figures from the manga industry, claims to be the “largest English-language manga and webtoon studio in North America” and is building an anime library through strategic global partnerships. The company also relies on a community of creators to “monetize their content and build deeper connections with fans through robust social features.”
Cool, cool. Tell me more.
“VoyceMe is at an exciting inflection point,” said Dylan Telano, CEO and Founder of VoyceMe. “Thanks to the trust of our investment partners, we can fully execute on our all-in-one platform experience and content strategy that aims to turn readers into creators by Democratization manga and webtoons. Through special technologies we have developed, we streamline the creation process and enable millions of fans to easily create and share their own artwork.” (emphasis added).
Oh. The company describes this “specialized technology” as “ethical AI” that will “create more publishing opportunities for first-time creators, experienced artists, and IPs looking to enter the anime world. Any user will be able to quickly and easily develop and distribute their own manga and webtoon.”
Democracy, for whom exactly? Somehow the generative AI industry has decided that this message around “democratizing access to creativity” will magically dispel creators’ objections and assuage ordinary people’s concerns about this technically impressive but easily abused and flawed technology that is literally based on the work of artists whose jobs it is designed to replace. Either that, or all these press releases are being written by bots.
Did I miss something when I said comics were “undemocratic”? I mean, all you need to make comics is a pencil and paper. Poor kids created billions of dollars’ worth of drawing pages on the subway or in the bathtub during the Great Depression.
Yes, it takes a lot of time to learn to draw. On the other hand, you don’t have to be Jim Lee or Alan Moore to make a popular comic. Randall Munroe, the genius behind the super-popular webcomic (later book series) XKCDdraws stick figures. Stick figures! Dave McElfatrick does that too, and it hasn’t stopped Cyanide and happiness from the spin-off of an animated series with four seasons, three board games and two video games. Axe Copthe webcomic, which became a Dark Horse series and an animated series, was drawn by Ethan Nicole based on stories by his then-six-year-old brother, Malachai. But sure, tell me how you need AI to help you realize your creative vision.
And what about the evil old gatekeepers? Ask Spike Trotman, the force of nature behind Iron Circus Comics, which has raised over $2.5 million in crowdfunding for controversial work by marginalized artists and is currently running the hugely popular laxity Cartoon. If there is no door, make one. There is no reason why creative people who want to make comics can’t make comics.
“It’s just a tool to help developers!” I asked illustrator Karla Ortiz, one of the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against some of the major generative AI platforms, whether a system built and trained with authorized content could ultimately prove to be a useful tool for professionals.
“No, not at all,” she replied. “They sell it that way, but ethics aside, the technology itself is flawed even if there was an ‘ethical model.’ AI has trouble with revisions… (and) it doesn’t understand the underlying logic of the image, so it’s terrible for things like armor or gear where form follows function. I can do it faster myself. High-end companies with big budgets and strict standards find AI useless for revisions. The horror stories mostly come from some mid-sized or smaller companies that lack resources and sometimes prioritize quick, cheap results over quality.”
The quality issues that often arise with AI art can turn off viewers and expose users as lazy bunglers. Publishers, taking their cues from their creators and customers, are cautious at best and largely unimpressed. When ethics alone aren’t convincing, they often issue policies that prohibit AI in published works on copyright grounds (see “Unfortunately, DC’s AI mess is just the beginning”). Those that don’t risk backlash.
It’s tough out there for a startup. Having helped found several companies myself during my misspent youth, I understand why this is happening and can sympathize. “AI” and “creator economy” are the magic words that open the checkbooks of big investors. The backers are not industry experts; many of them are playing a numbers game and hoping that one in ten of their bets will pay off. They want to say that you are going to turn an industry on its head and “shake up” the old economy.
The problem is that in a future where anyone can create “professional-looking” comics by typing a prompt and pressing a button, creative output is worth nothing. So please, those of you smart and ambitious enough to build platforms that bring webtoons to India or try to expand the market to underserved audiences, trust your creators to do the work. Maybe that’s not “democratic,” but that’s OK.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ICv2.com editorial staff.
Rob Salkowitz is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture and has been nominated twice for the Eisner Award.
