AI in Webtoon Creation: Challenges, Perceptions, and Design Implications

While generative AI is rapidly advancing in creative industries, its adoption in webtoons—a mobile-first digital comics format—remains contentious. In this exploratory study, we conducted interviews with nine readers, four creators, and six platform stakeholders to examine the sociotechnical dynamics of AI integration. Findings reveal a complex tension: readers value the parasocial authenticity of human creators and reject AI as soulless, compelling creators to adopt strategic silence regarding their use of AI for efficiency. Platforms mediate this conflict by redefining authorship from manual labor to directing and leveraging strategic invisibility to reconcile industrial efficiency with the illusion of human touch. We propose a Tripartite Mediation Model, which maps the structural tensions between creative agency (Production), authenticity (Reception), and market stratification (Distribution). Our study contributes design implications for labor-aware disclosure, scaffolded agency, and personalized training frameworks to preserve artistic integrity while addressing the sequential and emotional demands of webtoon storytelling.