The fourth season of the Ascendance of a Bookworm anime, produced by WIT Studio, premiered on April 4 this year, though to an unexpectedly rocky start. The long-running series was faced with serious backlash after the reveal of the animated opening sequence, which viewers suspected featured AI-generated assets. In response to the criticism, WIT Studio posted an official announcement on April 10, in which it states that upon investigation into the opening’s production process, it confirmed that generative AI was involved. Consequently, the opening sequence recently published on YouTube has been removed from the platform.
According to WIT, the backgrounds in some parts of the opening were indeed generated by AI, though the studio claims that “as a general principle, we do not allow the use of generative AI for our animated content.” The only exception to this is their short film The Dog & The Boy, which uses AI-generated assets and was created “for the purpose of testing out the technology”), WIT notes.
In the announcement, the studio explains that the incident was a result of inadequate production management and quality control systems. WIT apologizes to fans, the original author and all other related parties for the error. They also state that there are no other AI-generated assets in the anime except for the problematic scene in question.
As for how this will affect the future episodes of the Ascendance of a Bookworm, the studio promises that the AI-generated background art will be redrawn from scratch, and that the new version of the opening sequence will start airing with the second episode of the anime.
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