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Media Do: No Plans for Seven Seas to Use AI for Translation

Media Do issued a new statement on Tuesday, following the announcement of its subsidiary Media Do International's acquisition of Seven Seas Entertainment on Sunday. The new statement said that the company has "absolutely no plans" to have Seven Seas use AI to translate manga and other works. It added that it "remains steadfast" that Seven Seas will continue to use human translators and editors, that the acquisition will not result in changes in staffing, and that Seven Seas will continue under its existing leadership and team.

Media Do also stated that its large language model AI-based "MediaDo Translation System" (MDTS) is designed to "help Japanese translators manage their translated text when working on Japanese literature," and is not intended for use by Seven Seas. In the original announcement of the acquisition, Media Do characterized the MDTS as playing a crucial role alongside the Seven Seas acquistion in making its push for worldwide distribution.

Media Do International acquired Seven Seas for US$80 million.

Manga translator Jason DeAngelis founded Seven Seas Entertainment in 2004, and prior to this acquisition, it was the largest independent publisher of manga and light novels in the English language market. The company began as a publisher of original English language (OEL) manga, but has since expanded to publishing Japanese manga, light novels, Korean webtoons and manhwa, Chinese novels and manhua, and Thai novels.

Tokyo-based Media Do distributes e-books for many Japanese publishers. The company established its American subsidiary Media Do International in San Diego, California in 2016, and it publishes translated manga such as Baki digitally.

Media Do acquired the MyAnimeList site from DeNA in January 2019, and later sold all of its shares in the company to Tokyo-based Web3 and AI company Gaudiy in March 2025. Media Do, NTT Docomo, Akatsuki Group, and MyAnimeList also launched their jointly developed digital manga distribution service MANGA MIRAI in the United States in March 2025.

Source: Media Do (link 2)