Shueisha faces AI translation doubts over Manga Million launch

To celebrate its 100th anniversary, the Japanese publisher Shueisha launched ‘Manga Million’, an online platform offering approximately 400 manga series for free in over 100 languages. The project includes nearly 300 titles receiving their first translations, featuring major series such as ‘One Piece’ and ‘Hunter x Hunter’.

Despite Shueisha’s initial assurances that artificial intelligence was not used for the translations, users have raised doubts. Investigations into the project’s official credits revealed the involvement of companies like Flitto Japan and EC Innovations, both of which offer AI-based translation and localization solutions. While Flitto also provides professional human localization, the presence of these firms has led to community speculation regarding the use of machine translation. Shueisha has not yet issued a follow-up statement clarifying the specific technologies used for the various titles.