Artificial intelligence is giving new opportunities even to movie pirates. A 66-year-old man from Japan used AI to colorize the 1954 black-and-white film “Godzilla.” His “creativity” was not appreciated by either the police or the copyright holder when they learned that he was selling DVDs with the color version of the film online.
Artificial intelligence is giving new opportunities even to movie pirates. A 66-year-old man from Japan used AI to colorize the 1954 black-and-white film “Godzilla.” His “creativity” was not appreciated by either the police or the copyright holder when they learned that he was selling DVDs with the color version of the film online.
Ippei Miyamoto sold about 1,500 pirated DVDs online, earning at least 1.7 million yen (408,000 UAH) from them from January 2024 to May 2025. He advertised the films as "legal" and "masterpieces colored by artificial intelligence," writes the Japanese publication The Mainichi.
The man was arrested and confirmed that he used AI to add color to black-and-white film.
Toho, which distributes and owns the copyright to the long-running Godzilla franchise, filed a complaint with the police in February of this year. During searches, police found 70 DVDs of the pirated version of the film in the man's home.
