Two years ago, as AI-generated images and anime began to infiltrate social media, illustrator Momoji Mokume despaired that Japan was turning into “a paradise for copyright infringement and machine learning”. “I thought the job of an illustrator would disappear and even the culture of creativity would be lost,” said Mokume, a 21-year-old university student in Tokyo, using his pen name as illustrator, anime artist and musician. “It felt like there was no future for us.” During that period, global ...