It has been quite a while since Korea established itself as a ‘content powerhouse’. In keeping with data from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the content industry, including K-pop and films, achieved sales of 151 trillion won and exports of $13.2 billion (about 19.256 trillion won) as of 2022. It became a hot topic because it was the next figure than secondary batteries or electric vehicles.
As of the primary half of 2023, the export amount of the domestic content industry continues to rise, reaching $5.39 billion, a 1.3% increase in comparison with the identical period last yr. It has develop into one in every of the highest three export products together with biohealth and computer fields.
This yr may be seen as the primary yr that artificial intelligence (AI) was introduced in earnest into content production. There may be growing interest in whether AI will have the ability so as to add strength to the K-content boom next yr. The signs are quite a few.
The domestic ‘AI Film Festival’, which began last yr, is an example that reflects this trend well.
It initially began as a ‘part’ of the general film festival, equivalent to the AI section of the Changwon International Democratic Film Festival and the AI section of the Bucheon International Implausible Film Festival, but has recently expanded into exclusive events equivalent to the ‘1st Korea AI International Film Festival’ and the ‘Busan International Artificial Intelligence Film Festival’. It’s a side.
While overseas, AI corporations equivalent to Runway and Open AI are likely to lead events, in Korea, museums and organizations are actively participating. The frequency of events is second to none overseas.
Webtoons are also one in every of the fields where generative AI is being introduced quickly. Some people strongly object to it, claiming that it’s learning the works of artists without permission, however the accepted opinion within the industry is that they’re already using it rather a lot of their work and are only not making it public.
Amongst domestic startups, Onoma AI, Cream, and Super Engine are aiming for AI solutions as ‘creative assistants.’ Onoma AI is working on a project with author Lee Hyun-se, who’s well-known for ‘The Foreigners of Fear’, and Super Engine was invited to a Latest Yr’s event by Japanese cartoonists earlier this yr and received favorable reviews.
Using AI can be increasing in K-pop, which has an awesome overseas fandom. What caught probably the most attention this yr was the indisputable fact that Lee Gyo-gu’s Superton representative was included within the list of 100 artificial intelligence (AI) people published by Time magazine. Supertone, a subsidiary of Hive, revived the late Kim Kwang-seok’s voice through AI voice cloning and enabled singer Lee Hyun to release recent songs in six languages.
This is essentially because of the indisputable fact that the representative image of Korea is K-pop. After all, agencies are also known to be aggressively considering the introduction of AI. For a similar reason, Pulse Nine is usually included amongst Korea’s leading AI corporations cited by overseas media. AI idol Eternity has been continually invited to domestic and international events this yr as well.
Using generative AI in music production can be increasing. In keeping with Forja Labs, which makes a speciality of AI music creation, using creation AI tools has increased in guide vocals and other fields. Even though it could also be difficult to completely introduce generative AI into industrial music, it’s a notable change.
Video is not any exception. Wapo attracted attention by producing the animation ‘Hongjin’s Restaurant’ using its self-developed AI video production tool ‘Snoppy’. Moreover, Things Flow has released ‘AI-based’ short-form drama content based by itself platform and mental property rights (IP).
It has now develop into common for AI-generated videos to look in TV commercials. LG U+ is a representative example.
The evaluation is that the introduction of AI in content production is an inevitable trend. With the event of AI tools and content distribution platforms, the barriers to ‘content creation and distribution’ are progressively lowering. If that’s the case, it is predicted that the purpose of competition will probably be who produces quality content faster.
Song Min, CEO of Onoma AI, said, “Content innovation will further speed up as multimodal AI that integrates and processes text, image, voice, and video data develops,” adding, “Agent-based ‘customization’ equivalent to multilingual and localization support of AI “Content and solutions will receive attention,” he said.
After all, it’s true that generated AI content continues to be in its early stages and has a robust experimental nature. Also, no work has emerged that has develop into truly popular.
Nevertheless, at the present pace of technological development, there may be a great likelihood that it’ll lead a brand new trend beyond getting used as a tool to assist practitioners of their work. Attention can be being paid as to if generative AI will have the ability to interrupt down the partitions of content creation, which has been the domain of experts, and further lead to a different K-content boom.
Reporter Jang Se-min semim99@aitimes.com
