Summary
One of thehottest debates in the modern worldright now is the use of AI, or artificial intelligence. An incredible amount of progress has been made in the world of AI in the last few years, and it is being used in more and more industries. For better or for worse, the anime and manga industries have also been affected.Entire manga are even being designed by AIinstead of humans these days.
But the simple fact remains that AI is not human, andcan make mistakes that humans would otherwise (hopefully) not make. This is a lesson that one light novel author is learning particularly strongly at the moment, after trusting what an AI told him without checking it very deeply. The author in question is Kiraku Kishima, who allowed an AI to name one of the characters in their current light novel,Kasshoku Musume no Latina-san ni Ore no Karada ga Nerawarteiru. The result has been incredibly embarrassing.
AI Only Understands So Much
It Takes a Human to Know What’s Okay
Kiraku Kishima has been writing a light novel calledKasshoku Musume no Latina-san ni Ore no Karada ga Nerawarteiru. The title translates approximately toThe Dark Brown Latina Girl Is Aiming For My Body.Manga Mogura REsummarized the plot in English on their X (formerlyTwitter) page as,
Youth Romcom about an ordinary high school boy (well, maybe with a higher sex drive than usual) is helping out a foreign Latina girl in trouble. Grateful this super cheerful girl suddenly wants to marry him & have his children!
It sounds like a typical romantic comedy plot for a light novel, but with one element that makes it stand out from the rest - the love interest is a Latina girl. At first, this got a lot of attention overseas for a few reasons. Of course, it does make the light novelstand out from others in the same genre, and the front cover design does feature a curvy, dark-skinned protagonist. It got positive attention from crowds that assumed Kiraku Kishima knew about Latin culture, so they were excited to read about it - and on the flip side, it got a lot of negative attention from people who were uncertain if Kishima really knew what they were doing writing the character.
Then, only two days after the post was made by Manga Mogura RE, Kishima themselves posted a clarification about their work on their own X page. While the protagonist is a Latina girl, her name is also Latina. In the series of posts, the author admitted that they were not sure what to nametheir beautiful protagonist, who they said is an “indigenous person of the Amazon and her second language is Portuguese.” To try to find a name, Kishima asked an AI engine to give them a list of popular girls names in South America. The AI suggested the name “Latina” on the list, and that was what Kishima chose, not knowing that the word was also an adjective.
A Hasty Clarification From the Author
Kiraku Kishima made all the posts on their Twitter page using a machine translator, since the misunderstanding was only with the English-speaking world regarding the use of the world “Latina.” They went on to say in theirposts,
The reason why I’m talking openly about the process is because people who saw the excitement overseas and thought, “This is written by someone who is knowledgeable about Latin culture!” were disappointed after purchasing it. Because I didn’t want it to happen. The content of the work is also a comedy, so I would be happy if my mistakes made you laugh.
However, their mistakes are not making people laugh online. Many of the nearly 500 replies on the author’s posts call them out for not double-checking what the AI was producing, and saying that the fact that they named a Latina character literally “Latina” shows just how little they know aboutthe culture they are writing about. Many people, specifically from the Latin community especially, have chimed in, hoping that the light novel will not spread false assumptions about their culture based on Kishima’s ignorance of it. They do not find the mistake - or the comedy light novel itself - to be a laughing matter.
The author has not made further comments, likely not wanting to bury themselves even further by saying the wrong thing. Time will tell ifKasshoku Musume no Latina-san ni Ore no Karada ga Nerawarteiruwill be able to recover from this happening so early on in its production, or whether this AI-generated mistake is instead going to be what sends the novel to its doom. Though depending on how the character of Latina is portrayed in the light novel, it may have been problematic long before she was named by artificial intelligence. Kiraku Kishima has learned the hard way not to trust AI without double-checking everything it produces, which serves as a lesson to everyone.
