Toei Animation To Apply AI Tools in Future Animation Productions

Fans express worry with the gradual emergence of AI implementation into anime.

As early as 2023, WIT Studio worked on “The Dog and the Boy”, a short film where the backgrounds were made with AI.

Now in 2025, there is a short anime film, Twin Hinahima by KaKa Creation, even being made mostly by AI.

It seems that Toei Animation will be following Studio WIT’s lead but may go beyond that.

In Toei Animation’s Financial Year 2025 report, under the FY2026 outlook section, the company says, “We will seek to co-develop new business opportunities and improve the efficiency and quality of our production, capitalizing on synergies between AI and animation production technologies.”

Example future uses of AI at Toei Animation include:

• AI-generated storyboards and layouts
• Coloring and color correction
• Line drawing correction
• In-between generation
• Background generation from photos

Toei Animation has actually involved AI in some of its recent projects as it worked with PFN in 2021 to create an experimental short film called “Urvan” using PFN’s Scenify tool that makes photo backgrounds from real life into anime backgrounds as a way to reduce background work by 1/6th of its normal time.

This is worrying as One Piece is currently Toei’s biggest anime property and had recently returned from a 6-month hiatus.

However, Toei Animation staff have clarified that they will not be implementing AI into their current animation productions.

Over on Twitter, animator Vincent Chansard has confirmed that AI is not being used in One Piece.

Pewpiece has also interpreted the 2026 statement on AI to be a PR move than an actual shift in anime production.

Source: Twitter and Toei 

Vincent Chansard confirms AI is not being used for the One Piece anime 🥹 pic.twitter.com/MvbliQs19H

— unonumero56 (@unonumero_56) May 17, 2025

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