Journalist-turned-entrepreneur reinvents news with comics, AI

Hyun Shin, founder and CEO of Glitter Company (gltr), a startup offering an AI solution that turns text into online comics (webtoons) and animated videos, poses during the interview with The Korea Times held on the sidelines of the 2025 World News Media Congress hosted by the World Association of News Publishers in Krakow, Poland, May 5. Korea Times photo by Ahn Kyung-mo

KRAKOW, Poland — For Hyun Shin, CEO of Glitter Company (gltr), a U.S.-based AI solution startup that turns text into online comics and videos, "News is so boring."

Speaking to the Korea Times on the sidelines of the 2025 World News Media Congress in Krakow, Poland, Shin said, "News media are supposed to be able to foster culture and a public sphere based on empathy, but, trapped in text, they've only added to economic and political divides," noting he's never read a newspaper from front to back.

"If news can deliver messages through comics, it can be more universal, empathetic and more interesting," Shin added, explaining the role comics can play in journalism and why he founded his AI startup.

Gltr was among the companies that showcased their products at the event hosted by the World Association of News Publishers from May 4 to 6.

Gltr offers a simple and intuitive AI solution that turns any text, including articles, press releases and financial reports, into comics, identifying the best comic format for the content users provide.

The AI service features more than 30 image styles, from Studio Ghibli-inspired to contemporary Korean drawing styles.

"The narrative style of Korean webtoons, like that of Korean dramas, is very addictive, and that is what we can provide as well," he said, noting that Korean online comics use unique camera angles, highlight word balloons in a distinctive way and employ a lot of over-the-shoulder shots.

"As you can see in the film 'Parasite,' the basement bathroom scene evokes a unique emotion through its specific camera angles. (gltr's) solution has learned a lot of such unique perspectives and (visual techniques) from Korean content."

What sets gltr's service apart from other services is that users can scribble directly on the generated images, creating room for more user participation and a public space for news communication. The generated comics can also be transformed into animated videos.

"Comics act like the storyboard for animation," Shin said. "You can edit the comics and change the content of the animation as well."

Unlikely jump from newsroom to tech entrepreneurship

Hoping to make the news, which had become a part of himself, enjoyable and meaningful to many, he left his stable job of over 20 years and started a media company in the United States in 2022.

As a fan of comic books who was influenced by them a lot since childhood, he wanted to build an online comic platform. But he struggled to build a working business model.

“I was just a journalist. I knew technology but didn’t know how to do business. I kept failing," he said.

With $500 left from the initial investment, he bought an Nvidia RTX 4080 graphics card, vaguely thinking he could do something with it involving AI, believing it was the future based on his knowledge as a journalist.

Combining his two passions, news and comics, with AI, Shin came up with a business idea that flashed across his mind. He realized that no one was using AI to create comics to deliver news. Korea's reputation for its vertical online comics, or webtoon, has also caught his attention. He saw potential in training the company's AI model to learn and mimic the distinctive style of Korean content, which has become globally popular.

Hyun Shin, founder and CEO of Glitter Company (gltr), a startup offering an AI solution that turns text into online comics (webtoons) and animated videos, shows sample comics to participants at the 2025 World News Media Congress hosted by the World Association of News Publishers in Krakow, Poland, May 5. Korea Times photo by Ahn Kyung-mo

Shin's model was trained on a database of Korean news to choose the most suitable comic format for each story.

"Comics will be more effective in the boring industry like finance. We can add fun to boring financial datasheets," he said.

The business is still in its early stages, and some companies are yet to disclose their work, but many are preparing to release their first comics-based journalism works.

Stressing that the online comics market is huge globally, he added, "We are competing only with (text-based news). But with comics, we can change the market."

"This can be a little bit cheeky. But I believe we can make news great again.”

The author of this article attended the 2025 World News Media with funding from the Korea Press Foundation.