From the article:
The app will utilize Mantra’s AI-assisted translation system. Mantra is the service that is providing AI translation for the simultaneous English releases of Kore Yamazaki’s The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Ghost and Witch manga. Shogakukan invested in Mantra in June.
Also, I found this bit interesting. Will be curious to see what this ends up looking like and if the AI will mess this up:
The releases will also include word balloons with icons of the characters to display characters’ lines, as Shogakukan told Nikkei it has received feedback that “Japanese names are hard to remember.”
I’m interested in the quality of the translation. I hope this service doesn’t just use the AI translation as is. I use AI translations for my work and it became really good in the last 2 years or so with little additional human correction necessary. But an editorial pass is still necessary even if it’s just a little.
That being said I only ever worked with generalized models and who knows how feasible a specialized model can be for this task. And whatever the result will be, the simple fact is that it’s only getting better from that point on. So I’m looking forward to (timely) access to a lot more light novels in the future.