Emi Kusano, a Tokyo-based multidisciplinary artist, creates hyperrealistic representations of collective and individual memories using AI technology. She has appeared in magazine covers and gallery shows, and worked with a range of high profile international partners. She recently spoke at the WIPO Information Session on the Opportunities and Challenges Raised by Generative AI.
Kusano’s work exists in the intersection of nostalgic culture and emerging technologies. She recreates retro styles and art trends while working with tools such as generative AI and non-fungible tokens. This places her at an inflection point in the discussions around copyright protection, and emerging technology. She sat down with the WIPO team in December of 2024 to discuss her career, the role of technology in art, and how she sees the state and future of intellectual property.
Retro-Futuristic Artwork
Emi’s work has been far reaching across mediums and genres. She started out studying fashion design and working as a photographer. She preferred to label herself as a musician early in her career because she could sing, write, design costumes, take photos, and create videos, all while maintaining a cohesive creative identity. Today, she works extensively in digital art, gaining international recognition for her work with AI generated images and NFTs to explore culture in the past and present in impactful ways.
Throughout this varied career, Kusano has looked back to look forward, reflecting an obsession with recreating the culture of the 1980s and 1990s. As a singer with Satellite Young, she sees herself as an 80s pop idol. In Neural Fad, she created AI generated montages of characters wearing real and imagined streetwear trends from the second half of the 1900s. She critiqued the magical girl tropes of the 1970s-1990s in Melancholic Magical Maiden. She is also the creative director of Shinsei Galverse, an animation studio creating cartoons based on classic hand-drawn Japanese anime.
Emerging Technology to Unlock Creativity
Kusano frames her work as a conversation between the digital and the real. She says in her artist’s statement, “by merging algorithmic uncertainty with my artistic vision, I question the role of the artist in the AI era. I view machines as creative partners in exploring the significance and vulnerability of being human.” Her work is littered with allusions to past culture as seen through a lens of the modern and futuristic, developed using emerging technology.
Regarding the role of AI in her work Emi reflects that “I always say that AI is like photography. You can take any photo you like. Just have a phone with you and take the picture. But if you want to take it [well], you want to buy a new camera with a big lens or you get the right film or change your tools, and you set up lighting.” The real challenge and creativity behind generative AI comes in customizing datasets and outputs to deliver something really original, something a human might struggle to replicate.
NFT Zombie Zoo project
Emi Kusano also uses Non-Fungible Tokens in her art as a means of distribution, access control, and proof of ownership. During COVID lockdown, Emi became interested in NFTs through online discussions. As an artist, the community and the utility of NFTs fascinated her. After hearing Kusano talk about the technology, her son asked to mint NFTs of his own, in a project he called Zombie Zoo. The pieces he created with Emi’s help were picked up by an international group of artists and technologists, and became one of the most successful NFT projects in Japan.
Emi Kusano, his mother and his father
After this, Emi Kusano became well known in the global NFT community. She has a unique perspective on the technology. Rather than focusing on the IP use for NFTs, she sees them as a way for international artists to share ideas, find collaborators, give feedback and encouragement, and promote new work. Emi notes that many high-profile projects have failed because they did not respect or understand the collaborative nature of the community, looking at the NFTs only as a kind of publicity stunt. On the other hand, she sees the success of her work with Gucci and Christies as a counterexample. Gucci gave her creative freedom and resources to remix their brand, and Christies distributed it, mirroring the collaborative NFT community she is drawn to.
Making artwork more accessible through NFT Art
Emi Kusano sees that same community as opening the art world to a new generation of creatives. By accessing a novel and global network and distribution system artists anywhere in the world can access collaborations and distributions that would be closed to them.
I'm living in Tokyo and being a parent to two kids, and I'm not living in London or New York, so it would be really hard to succeed without any major gallery, but in digital there is a chance to break out being an artist in the NFT space.
Emi Kusano
The Complex Relations of Frontier Technologies and IP
In spite of her good experiences, Kusano knows about the controversy and confusion in the art world over IP issues surrounding generative AI and the complex relationship between NTFs and copyright. As an artist with deep love for her culture who works with AI and NFTs, Emi Kusano has a valuable perspective on the technology and the controversies surrounding it.
Artists’ Concerns over Generative Art
Regarding the IP concerns behind feeding generative AI models, she reflects that the concerns depend on the artist’s medium. Since she primarily produces photorealistic and fashion driven work, she is comfortable with using the tool. Kusano notes that photography relies on subtleties of timing, lighting, composition and the story behind the picture and thus is relatively safe from AI concerns. This reflects her thinking about AI output mattering to the discussion:
Artists like me remix different things to create an output that is completely different from the input... Rather than the input, I believe the output matters, and if that output is something completely new and that's never been seen, that should be considered as a form of art.
Emi Kusano
Kusano sees herself as working from a place of respect for history. She cited one movement, Takenoko-zoku, which had only a brief extant recording available online. Through generative AI content, she can raise the profile of otherwise obscure movements like this.
Risks of AI Deepfakes duplicating talents
On the other hand, Kusano acknowledges concerns over AI in other mediums she works in. She notes that illustrators and musicians are at high risk of duplication and is particularly worried about duplicating actors, “I believe this is against human rights because. They are using a part of humans, their bodies and their faces, their voices. And that goes against my morality.” Reflecting these concerns, her anime project uses AI, but with a dedicated system designed to protect her studio and others.
Using NFT for collaborating rather than creating boundaries
She also reflects on the challenges of NFTs as IP protection. As noted, Kusano thinks limiting NFTs to an alternative to traditional IP misses the great strength of the technology. The more NFTs are used to create walled gardens and protect brands and companies from artists, the less useful they become. Their value to Kusano comes in creating a space and a community based on sharing and creativity in a digital space. However, the more formal recognition and structure NFTs have, the better she sees them working in the future.
The Edge of Art and Technology
Emi Kusano has a professional foot in both worlds of AI, NFTs, and the future of art. Her deep respect for traditional art and culture drives her artistic vision while emerging technology unlocked creative opportunities and accelerated her career dramatically. While she has wholehearted embraced AI and NFTs, she worries about their direct impact on copyright, IP and on wider culture:
In our current AI era, the boundary between truth and fiction is becoming exponentially ambiguous, with an overwhelming flood of information beyond our cognitive capacity. While this may seem to point to a dystopian future, there are more pressing matters for discussion. We might be the last generation capable of sharing such intense nostalgia. Using my art as a common language for discourse, I encourage a reevaluation of the present time.
Emi Kusano
