# How bad are these AI generated kanji?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-bad-are-these-ai-generated-kanji/979924>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 16, 2023, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-bad-are-these-ai-generated-kanji/979924 "2023-02-16T23:58:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2023, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-bad-are-these-ai-generated-kanji/979924/1 "2023-02-16T23:58:40Z")

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AI engines toss out “English” that is a mix of pretty good letters, slightly distorted ones, and completely alien shapes. With the good letters, words are sometimes sensible, sometimes not.

I’ve always wondered about the non-Roman writing they attempt to produce. Is it a similar mix of sense, near-sense, and nonsense?

I generated a series of t-shirts, one set with the prompt “funny meme t-shirt” and one with “funny Engrish t-shirt”. (I wanted bad English on the second set, but that wasn’t what I got.) I then expanded one image from each set to add additional text at the bottom. These are the results.

[![](https://i.imgur.com/skv67Z6.jpeg) ](https://i.imgur.com/skv67Z6.jpeg)

[![](https://i.imgur.com/NGXLkW4.jpeg) ](https://i.imgur.com/NGXLkW4.jpeg)

So for those who can read kanji, is this a similar level of nonsense characters to the Roman characters, or worse? (I’m guessing worse, because more complex characters have more ways they can go wrong.)

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**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2023, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-bad-are-these-ai-generated-kanji/979924/2 "2023-02-17T19:02:05Z")

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They are very bad. They are a jumble. In some cases, there are recognisable elements (like the top of the top-left character. But they mainly don’t look like kanji at all. A few reasons (apart from the fact that they just don’t):  
They are far too complex. The average number of strokes in each character is up around the maximum possible.  
They are the wrong shape. They are mainly tall rather than square (especially as you go further down the shirt to the 4th and 5th line).  
There is far more vertical stacking than would be expected, and almost none of the characters have the classic division into a left and right half (where the left side suggests the meaning and the right side the sound).  
Real kanji are made up of a standard set of elements (bushu). These fake kanji are not.  
The less complex examples look oddly “dismembered”

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2023, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-bad-are-these-ai-generated-kanji/979924/3 "2023-02-17T20:04:53Z")

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Here are some really good kanji characters created by AI:

[Language Log » Mirabile scriptu: fake kanji created by AI (upenn.edu)](https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=57599)