From paper to digital: announcing the exactly.ai x AI Hokusai competition winners

exactly.ai teamed up with AI Hokusai to present a challenge for users to train models based on Katsushika Hokusai’s iconic manga series. The goal of the challenge was to train an AI model on exactly.ai which could faithfully reproduce the 19th-century master's artistry and adapt it to modern and contemporary subjects.

We were delighted to collaborate on this competition with AI Hokusai, an ArtTech research project which explores the boundaries of artistic practices. Through combining Hokusai's unique style with cutting-edge technology, the research project seeks to study the artistic process enhanced with artificial intelligence. By examining the relationship between artist and computer through technological, anthropological, and philosophical perspectives, AI Hokusai addresses fundamental questions about the future of creativity, ethics, and the evolving role of creatives in a world undergoing rapid technological transformation.

Why hokusai?

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was a celebrated Japanese artist and educator known for bridging Eastern and Western artistic traditions. He was an innovator who broke with tradition by applying the woodblock printing technique of ukiyo-e, originally used for depicting people, to entirely new subject matter of landscapes. For this competition, we asked participants to use AI to take Hokusai’s groundbreaking approach one step further, by training an algorithm to apply his distinctive style to any subject matter.

The competition

Inspired by the printmaking tradition’s ability to replicate artwork faithfully, this competition focused on training models capable of generating works that are almost indistinguishable from Hokusai’s originals. By constructing a dataset from Hokusai’s manga, participants were challenged to experiment with how exactly.ai’s algorithm learns to create in a particular style.

For this competition a distinguished jury of: Anna Shvets, Evgeny Merman and Vladimir Opredelenov selected only 3 winners from 200 submissions. They would like to thank everyone who participated and noted that the decision-making process was a challenging one, given the consistent high quality of the entries.

Winning models were selected for their ability to achieve a high level of authenticity and faithfully replicate Hokusai's signature style, composition and use of colour. Beyond the formalist aspects of his artwork, the winners also successfully conveyed the same emotional and visual impact, creating outputs that feel like a genuine extension of Hokusai’s artistic legacy.

We are thrilled to announce the winners of our competition.

First place, with a prize of £1,500, was awarded to Nancy Oliveri.

In second place, receiving a prize of £1,000, was FRUITS.

And Aleksander took third place, earning the £500 prize.

The jury gives a special mention to Olga Souvermezoglou.

Congratulations to all the winners for their incredible work, and thank you to everyone who participated.