As one of Japan’s most prominent voices at the intersection of art and technology, Emi Kusano brings a deeply personal lens to the possibilities of AI. Born in Tokyo in 1990, Kusano first made her mark as a teenage street photographer documenting Harajuku’s fashion culture before expanding her practice across music, fashion, and visual art.
Today, her work spans more than 20 countries and institutions such as the Saatchi Gallery, M+ Museum, and Grand Palais Immersif, and she has collaborated with brands including LG and Adidas.
From founding the synth-pop group Satellite Young to reimagining pop-cultural memory through AI-driven projects like Neural Fad, Kusano positions technology not as a replacement for human creativity but as a collaborator.
Recognized in 2025 as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, she continues to weave nostalgia, futurism, and Japanese cultural narratives into her work—challenging audiences to reconsider how technology shapes both identity and imagination.
I’m deeply attracted to both a longing for pasts I never lived and the imagined futures of earlier eras.
In this first edition of our new series AI in Asia, Kusano reflects on her journey with AI, the influence of Japanese techno-animism, the reception of AI art across regions, and why she believes the cultural gravity of creativity is shifting toward Asia.
What first drew you to experimenting with AI as part of your creative process? Was there a specific project, tool, or moment that sparked your interest?
The very first time I touched AI was around 2018, when I was still mainly working as a musician. I used style transfer for a music video, one of the earliest forms of AI image processing. At that time, the results were very glitchy, and aesthetically, it felt like anyone could achieve the same output. It was more of an experiment than something I could claim as my own work.
The turning point came in 2021, when new models like Stable Diffusion and MidJourney emerged. They were capable of strikingly realistic visual reproduction, and I began writing prompts every single day and testing different tools.
My first major series using AI was for Neural Fad, which built on my long-standing love of street photography and 1980s idol culture. I realized that AI was the perfect medium for visualizing “pasts that never existed.”
You’ve infused Japanese cultural themes—such as techno-animism and the magical-girl aesthetic—into your AI work. How do these narratives guide your intent?
For me, AI is simply a tool to create what I most want to see. Even before AI, I had an obsession with pre-internet pop culture—moments when domestic media and trends grew in their own closed ecosystems. I was born in a transitional period: I experienced both mass media culture and the rise of the internet, so I’ve always been fascinated by the tension between the two.
When I try to recreate these cultural memories through Western-trained AI models, distortions inevitably appear—and that dissonance itself becomes interesting. The deeper I researched Japan’s relationship with technology, the more I recognized a cultural lens shaped by Buddhism, Shinto, and techno-animism—the belief that even gadgets or machines can have spirits.
Anime itself comes from “animism,” and this way of seeing has profoundly influenced how Japan envisions the future. My choice of Japanese motifs comes directly from that cultural and personal grounding.
What draws you to blending nostalgia and futurism in your art, and how does that fascination influence your process?
I’m deeply attracted to both a longing for pasts I never lived and the imagined futures of earlier eras. Mass media—television, cinema, magazines—created shared collective memories and stereotypes, and AI reproduces those very biases and patterns.
AI is a perfectly natural way to continue that dialogue between nostalgia and futurism.
By working with AI, I can generate countless “alternative worldlines” and “unrealized futures.” In that sense, AI mirrors what science fiction has always done: the futures people imagine at any given time are really reflections of their hopes and anxieties. For me, AI is a perfectly natural way to continue that dialogue between nostalgia and futurism.
How have collaborations with brands influenced your artistic approach and your use of AI?
Collaborations with brands have expanded both the reach and credibility of my work. Through Christie’s, I collaborated with Gucci. With LG Art Lab, I created Advertising Humanity, which was displayed on LG’s devices and even projected in Times Square.
We're excited to reveal @emikusano's debut artwork for @LGArtLab!
"Advertising Humanity" is a fictional ad set in an AI-dominated future 📺
Inspired by 80s Japanese TV, it questions whether AI can ever capture the meaning of being human 🦾
Catch it starting September 30! pic.twitter.com/46Jra9VHR2
— Now Media (@nowmedia) September 26, 2024
Working with such large brands allows my art to reach audiences far beyond the typical art world bubble. Importantly, these companies largely gave me freedom rather than restricting my vision. They acted as amplifiers, helping the work resonate in new contexts while respecting its integrity. Overall, it has been a major positive influence on how I integrate AI into public and cross-disciplinary projects.
How are audiences and brands responding to AI in design and marketing? Have you noticed differences across regions?
In recent years, across the art world overall, many of the AI works that have sold at the highest prices were handled through the digital departments of Christie’s and Sotheby’s. The market for AI art has been most visible on the blockchain, and many early collectors come from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or those who made fortunes in crypto.
In Japan and much of Asia, there’s a cultural openness to coexistence with technology. Growing up with anime where robots are often portrayed as friends, many people here simply don’t see AI as threatening in the same way.
At the same time, when my works reach a wider mainstream audience through the news or social media, backlash often follows: people say “AI is not art,” “you’re not a real artist,” or even “this is theft.” The reactions are highly polarized.
Regionally, I feel Japan is more optimistic toward new technologies compared to Western markets, where debates tend to be more black-and-white. In Japan and much of Asia, there’s a cultural openness to coexistence with technology. Growing up with anime where robots are often portrayed as friends, many people here simply don’t see AI as threatening in the same way.
Looking ahead, how do you see AI shaping the future of creativity in Asia?
I believe the cultural center of gravity is shifting toward Asia. With China leading the way, unique large language models and AI systems are emerging across the region. Younger generations are also growing up more with anime and games than Hollywood films, which will shape their creative vocabulary. In this sense, AI will not only reshape production but also highlight Asia’s cultural narratives in the global creative landscape.
What advice do you have for younger artists?
My advice to the next generation is this: tools will always change, but what never changes is the importance of your obsession—the subjects you love so deeply that you could explore them forever.
Look back to your roots, to the things that captivated you as a child, and use your own life as the context for why you need to express them. If you can articulate that, AI becomes an incredible partner. It can act as a sparring partner when you’re developing ideas, or as a collaborator when you need to direct a project—providing images, text, or even code to support your vision.
Think of AI as part of your creative “team.” Use it to dig deeper into your true obsessions, and you’ll find that the technology doesn’t replace your creativity—it expands it.
Quick Hits
A memorable time when AI completely missed the mark?
Honestly, AI “misses” all the time—hundreds, maybe thousands of times. But I don’t really think of them as failures. Each miss is part of the process, and I keep going until I find the flow. In fact, the errors are so constant that I can’t even remember specific ones anymore; they’re just woven into my creative rhythm.
If you could give AI one personality trait to make it a better creative partner, what would it be?
I’d want AI to stop lying—even unintentionally. Sometimes it presents things it doesn’t actually know as if they were facts. If it could simply say, “I don’t know,” that honesty would make it a far better collaborator.
You can learn more about Emi and her work at emikusano.art
