AI in Webtoon Creation: Challenges, Perceptions, and Design Implications

Paper Title

AI in Webtoon Creation: Challenges, Perceptions, and Design Implications

Publication Info

• Topic area: Integration of generative AI in webtoon creation and its sociotechnical implications.
• Keywords: Generative AI, webtoons, creative labor, authenticity, copyright, platforms, readers, creators, sociotechnical mediation.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: The adoption of generative AI in webtoon creation faces resistance due to concerns about authenticity, copyright, and the disruption of established creator-reader relationships. Existing AI tools are not optimized for the unique demands of webtoons, such as vertical scrolling and real-time feedback.
• Significance: Webtoons are a rapidly growing digital comics format with unique production and consumption dynamics. Understanding AI’s role in this ecosystem is critical to balancing efficiency with cultural and artistic integrity.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research has explored AI in creative industries, focusing on aesthetic evaluation and creator-AI collaboration. However, these studies overlook the distinct participatory culture and production constraints of webtoons. This paper addresses this gap by examining the perspectives of readers, creators, and platforms.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Tripartite Mediation Model, which conceptualizes AI as a mediator renegotiating labor, trust, and value across three axes: production (creators), reception (readers), and distribution (platforms).
• Novelty:
  1. Identifies the authenticity paradox where readers demand human labor but also high-quality, rapid output enabled by AI.
  2. Maps the shift in creative labor from manual drawing to cognitive directing.
  3. Proposes granular transparency and scaffolded agency to address tensions in AI integration.
  4. Suggests webtoon-specific AI tools for sequential consistency and ethical training frameworks.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 participants (9 readers, 4 creators, 6 platform stakeholders).
  • Thematic analysis of interview data to identify recurring patterns and tensions.
  • Developed design implications based on the Tripartite Mediation Model.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Readers reject AI-generated content as lacking authenticity but acknowledge its potential for efficiency in non-creative tasks.
  • Creators face a crisis of professional identity and adopt strategic silence to avoid reader backlash.
  • Platforms use AI for backend operations but struggle with transparency and balancing ecosystem stability.
• Advantage over baselines: The study provides a nuanced understanding of AI’s role in webtoons, addressing gaps in prior research by focusing on the ecosystem-level dynamics rather than individual creator-AI interactions.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Interviews with stakeholders revealed key tensions and opportunities in AI adoption.
  • Comparative stimuli (AI-generated vs. human-created webtoon images) were used to elicit reader feedback.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Small sample size limits generalizability.
  • Future work should empirically validate the proposed model and explore longitudinal impacts of AI integration.

Summary

This study explores the integration of generative AI in the webtoon ecosystem, highlighting tensions between efficiency, authenticity, and value distribution. The proposed Tripartite Mediation Model maps these tensions across production, reception, and distribution axes, emphasizing the shift from manual drawing to cognitive directing and the authenticity paradox. Key design implications include scaffolded agency, granular transparency, and webtoon-specific AI tools. While the findings are exploratory, they provide a foundation for addressing the sociotechnical challenges of AI in webtoon creation.