The Japanese government hopes to save manga from piracy with AI

Quick translations and targeting pirate sites may become more automated

Japan's efforts to curb piracy aren't just limited to anime, but the manga they're adapted from as well, as the country is preparing to utilize artificial intelligence to translate manga more quickly and keep readers away from pirate sites. Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs will also use AI to find illegal sites that cost billions of dollars in lost sales, according to Nikkei Asia.

Because of licensing issues or the lack of urgency to adapt certain stories, international fans turn to pirated versions of manga to read their favorite stories. However, many readers also chose illegal scans because they're available a few days earlier than the official versions, and they're free. According to a report from Authorized Books of Japan, a publishers' association that works to protect copyright and fight piracy, illegal online distribution is costing publishers an estimated 8.5 trillion yen ($55 billion) annually, eclipsing the Japanese content industry’s record 5.8 trillion yen ($37 billion) in overseas sales in 2023.

"The speed of manga translation has not kept pace with reader demand," Yukari Shiina, a part-time lecturer at Tokyo University of the Arts who studies the popularity of manga internationally, told Nikkei Asia. As such, the Agency of Cultural Affairs will support initiatives to train manga translators using AI, targeting several industry groups, universities, and vocational schools.

Applications will be accepted through March 21, with subsidies of 100 million yen each, and will teach translators in courses that focus on translation techniques and how to leverage AI. Private companies are creating specialized AI tools for manga translation, like the University of Tokyo startup-backed tool Mantra, which publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha currently back. It can translate character speech style, story setting, supports 18 languages, and cuts translation times in half when compared with the more traditional method, translating 200,000 pages per month — equal to almost 1,000 volumes.

Mantra has been used for the last two years, and can translate text from a page on the fly, and if the text is bigger than the speech bubble, the tool automatically adjusts the bubble. "AI has reduced simple tasks like replacing words," Mantra CEO Shonosuke Ishiwatari told Nikkei Asia that AI has "reduced simple tasks like replacing words," but emphasized that humans are still needed as part of the localization process. The message seems to be that fine-tuning of the translations to improve accuracy will still be done by people, but the speed has to go up to keep up with the demands of the market.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs is also looking to use AI to detect pirate sites by next fiscal year. As of now, it is a manual effort that's time-consuming and labor-intensive. The government is even looking to develop a system that automatically submits takedown requests and issues warnings to site operators.

Only about 10% of manga published each year is translated into English, with even lower rates for older titles and other languages, underscoring major untapped overseas potential. To capitalize on this, the government plans to work with the private sector to boost exports of Japanese content, targeting 20 trillion yen in overseas sales by 2033.

Audiences have seen anime explode in 2025 alongside the rising utilization of AI. Voice actors are worried that Hollywood, or at the very least, AI, will soon uproot them from their jobs with A-list celebs or technology. Even subs are getting the AI treatment, with notoriously horrible translations appearing on Prime Video. As emerging technologies make their way into manga, fans should expect some growing pains — and familiar concerns from both readers and creators along the way.