[makeitdouble]

That sounds similar to having an AI explain where you should be looking in a painting, or where to pay attention in a movie. This might be genuinely useful as an accessibility feature, but I'd also see strong sentiment against it, potentially from the creators of the art.

[doesnt_know]

I'm more of a manga reader then a western comic one, but why would there be sentiment against this? In what way is the reading order of panels up to interpretation?

[makeitdouble]

Focusing manga, the shoujo space for instance has a reputation for using out of frame character positionning and not shying away from composing pages with a visual flow that doesn't follow the actual character speech.

It would be complex to pin a given panel order as canonical when the author is playing games with the reader. I don't think authors would oppose an accesibility feature, but I could see the debate if it was a more prominent, sanctionned way of reading.

[dylan604]

You've now focused too much on manga/comics. Stepping back a bit and looking at art more in general and using the provided example of looking at a painting, who are you to tell me where I should be looking. yeah yeah, i see the obvious thing your AI is trying to tell me where to look, but I'm looking at this less obvious thing that really strikes my fancy. maybe it's a blemish. maybe it's a unique brush stroke/technique that others might not care about, but an aspiring artist might. (even if it is another stupid AI.)

[innocenat]

But the point of this entire discussion is about manga/comics???

[dylan604]

because that was the idea proposed on how to expand this concept to something else. that's how conversations evolve. someone says something that plants a seed for someone else, that then gets someone else thinking, that then, that then.

[Cthulhu_]

Yeah but isn't telling you where to look for and what to think contrary to the idea of art? Sure, a guide telling you why Van Gogh's brushstroke was interesting may give you a newfound appreciation of what from a distance is a simple looking painting, but treating looking at art as something that should be min/maxed and optimized sounds depressing.

[daemonologist]

I think aside from accessibility the main use case is for e-ink devices where the resolution isn't high enough to comfortably display the entire page at one and the refresh rate isn't high enough to pan/zoom quickly. With those limitations automatically "paging" through the panels probably makes for a much better reading experience (I haven't tried it myself).

[theresistor]

Guided Viewed was/is a thing in Comixology / Kindle comics.