Hirohiko Araki
Manga Artist
Creator of the long-running manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, who in 2024 called generative AI a “societal evil,” warned of an art world overrun by scammers, and recounted mistaking an AI forgery for his own work.
In his words
As AI continues to spread throughout society, we’re going to see an increasingly shady world filled with scammers exploiting it.
Copyright infringement by AI is also a “villain” that we manga artists must face.
Biography
Hirohiko Araki (born 1960) is one of Japan’s most influential manga artists, creator of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, which he has drawn since 1987 across multiple generation-spanning “parts” that made his flamboyant, fashion-inflected style instantly recognizable. His work has been the subject of a Louvre exhibition, and his instructional books on manga craft are widely read.
AI as a “societal evil”
In November 2024, in a new volume of his manga-technique series on creating villains, Araki turned to the rise of AI-generated illustration and dubbed it a “societal evil” that will inevitably reach manga. He described a personal jolt: coming across an image he was sure he had drawn himself, only to learn it was AI-generated — the model had mimicked even the distinctive way he draws eyelashes. For an artist whose signature is his style, the counterfeit struck at something fundamental.
Araki framed the problem in the vocabulary of his own storytelling — as a “villain” manga artists must confront — and was clear-eyed about the limits of a fix. Laws might be the only real check on AI copyright infringement, he acknowledged, but in a “world of con artists” he feared legislation could just as easily be captured to favor the scammers. His comments joined a broader alarm among manga creators like Junji Ito over models trained on their art.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
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