The Yuriten exhibition has pulled its 10th anniversary event after a fight over AI-generated art. Organizers announced the event, then admitted within hours that generative AI had been used in the announcement’s visual, in decorations at the show itself and in other promotions. Artists objected, and by Sunday the company behind the event had canceled it.
What happened
The organizers posted the announcement on social media on Friday. Hours later they posted again to acknowledge the AI use, adding that they would not use generative AI in future Yuriten exhibitions or in their promotional images. The clarification did not calm anyone. If anything, it made things worse, because it confirmed that the tool had touched the show itself and not merely a single image.
The reaction
Nio Nakatani, the creator of Bloom Into You, said she found the AI imagery both confounding and disappointing, and noted that she had taken part in past Yuriten exhibitions. Yukiko, of Futaribeya: A Room for Two, mused about not working with the organizers again, citing this and other reasons. Yayoi Osawa, of Hello, Melancholic!, pointed out that Yuriten had used AI despite being surrounded by creators for a decade.
The complaints were not coming from outsiders. They came from artists whose work had helped build the exhibition’s reputation.
The apology and the cancellation
Lilium, the company behind Yuriten, which also runs a yuri book cafe, issued a new statement on Sunday apologizing to the creators, the fans and everyone involved for the original post. Lilium said it had contracted another company to manage and promote the event, and it blamed shortcomings in its own vetting process for letting the AI image go out. It promised to review and strengthen that process and to be more thorough in enforcing its no-generative-AI policy on outside contractors.
Lilium deleted the announcement post shortly afterward and confirmed the event was canceled following multiple discussions inside the company.
Why it matters
Yuriten is not a small fan gathering. It launched with an exhibition at the now-closed Ikebukuro Marui department store in Tokyo from February 22 to 28, 2016, and it has run for a decade. Its 2017 edition teased an upcoming anime of Hiromi Takashima’s Kase-san and… manga. In 2018 the organizers canceled that year’s show five days before it was set to open, saying it would have been difficult for all of its creators to take part at that venue, then moved to a new Tokyo location later in the year.
So this is a tenth-anniversary event, canceled by the same organizers who once rescheduled for the sake of the artists on their roster. The cause this time was a decision about how to make a promotional image. The exhibition’s stated policy was already against generative AI, and the failure came at the level of a contractor it hired, which is exactly the kind of gap that small publishers and event teams struggle to police.
For another corner of the yuri world, see our coverage of The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy at All, which lands in January.
Source: Anime News Network
Featured image: The Yuriten announcement visual at the center of the dispute, via Yuriten / Anime News Network.
