Google Makes a Manga Generator (If You Can’t Draw but Want to)

Along with powerful tools for business and regular use, Google sometimes demonstrates its force and esthetic sense with unexpected nice bagatelles. One of the recent demonstrations of the power of AI is its Giga Manga project. With it, you can make great manga drawings even if you cannot draw at all.

 Though the project is backed by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, as well as a number of Japanese cultural institutions, the idea of it is simple. As you load the page and activate the Magic Mode, you can witness the AI recognize your strokes and rearrange them into a manga-style picture. The result may be far from what you expect, but the recognizable manga manner is still here. You may discover that what you have planned as a masculine face is recognized as a girl’s posture, and a dreadful sword is suddenly just a finger. No, there is nothing Freudian about it: it’s all machine learning.

 Of course, you can choose regular drawing (with a regular pencil) and return to the classical WYSIWYG instead of AI-assisted drawing. But it’s more fun to see how the AI reads your mind, even if it does incorrectly. You can spend hours at this simple-looking editor and enjoy how this AI interprets what you want to draw. For some, it’s an insight into their subconsciousness.

 AI-assisted drawing has already been applied in some web projects like AutoDraw and research like this one on Medium.com. We can also recall popular photo filters that make photos look like paintings by famous artists. But watching this one working its magic in real-time is something great, though incomprehensible not in the way you’d prefer it.

 Tell us frankly: you went to the Giga Manga page as soon as you saw the link, didn’t you? And how did you like the result? How close was it to what you intended to draw? Share your impressions or even links to your AI-made masterpieces in the comments!