What was
supposed to be a giant party to celebrate a decade of supporting the Yuri genre
ended up becoming a public relations nightmare. The organization of the famous
Yuriten exhibition had to show its face and drastically cancel the first event
of its tenth anniversary, which was scheduled to take place this weekend in
front of the Hareza Ikebukuro complex in Tokyo, all for having used images
generated by artificial intelligence in its advertising.
The
conflict erupted just hours after the official account posted promotional art
for Ikebukuro's campaign. The organization itself admitted shortly after that
not only the image of the advertisement had been created with artificial
intelligence, but also several of the decorative elements planned for the venue
and other promotions of the event. This unleashed a wave of immediate rejection
among well-known mangakas in the medium. Nio Nakatani, the popular author of Bloom
Into You, openly expressed her disappointment at seeing a platform
dedicated to art resort to these tools, while creators such as Yukiko (Futaribeya:
A Room for Two) and Yayoi Osawa (Hello, Melancholic!) strongly
questioned the lack of respect for the work of the artists who held the
exhibition for ten years.
Faced with
the gigantic funa and the possibility of losing its main collaborators, the
Lilium company, in charge of operating the event and its well-known book café,
released a statement apologizing to the authors and fans. The company justified
the stumble by explaining that they had hired an external agency for
advertising management and admitted internal failures in their review filters
that allowed the material to be removed. Lilium assured that they will maintain
a strict zero-AI policy on all their future projects and proceeded to remove
the original post before making official the total cancellation of the
scheduled activities.
About
Yuriten
Yuriten is a prominent commercial and
artistic exhibition born in Tokyo in February 2016, designed to celebrate and
promote manga and illustration culture focused on love between girls. Over the
years, the event has established itself as a fundamental meeting point for the
industry, being the stage where exclusive previews of iconic works such as the
animated adaptation of Kase-san and... by Hiromi Takashima have been
presented.
