Black Jack’s special chapter created with AI was released in the new edition of the weekly magazine Shonen Championin celebration of the 50th anniversary of the manga by Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, Dororo).
The special titled Black Jack – Kikai no Shinzou – Heartbeat Mark IIwas developed with the ChatGPT-4 model, trained to understand the structure of the story and the relationships between the characters.
A Tezuka Productions brought together artists to work based on the general idea created by the program. Among the names is Shigeto Ikehararesponsible for several mangas in Mega Manwho once worked as Tezuka’s assistant.
The son of the author of the original work,Makoto Tezuka, was in charge of the project. He acknowledged that the idea may seem outrageous, but said he believes his father would use AI if he were alive and that his goal is to understand how this tool can be used to help create manga, not replace artists.
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The medical drama follows an unlicensed but talented surgeon named Black Jack. Gifted with excellent surgical technique, Black Jack always miraculously saves seriously ill patients on the verge of death. But he charges an outrageous price for his operations, and so his presence is shunned in medical circles.
Black Jack lives peacefully in his desert clinic with his assistant, Pinoko, who had her life saved by him. Patients who have been discredited by other doctors come to see him every day. He represents the last hope for them.
Black Jack was originally serialized in Shonen Champion magazine and published in Japan by Akita Shoten between 1973 and 1983, with 25 volumes in total.
