Social media is at present flooded with AI-generated Studio Ghibli-inspired pictures as a part of a pattern sparked by the launch of OpenAI’s new GPT‑4o picture generator — and it’s precipitated a vociferous debate that has seen previous anti-AI feedback from Hayao Miyazaki resurface.
In a demo of the brand new native picture era in ChatGPT and Sora led by CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI took a selfie and turned it into a picture that appears like Studio Ghibli artwork.
this was an actual labor of affection from @gabeeegoooh. congrats gabe; glorious work!
here’s what we generated through the livestream: pic.twitter.com/fmHWp4d9AF
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 25, 2025
Sam Altman stated on X / Twitter that OpenAI “put plenty of thought into the preliminary examples we present after we introduce new expertise,” which suggests the Ghibli fashion was a deliberate alternative.
And, a day after the demo, Altman tweeted:
>be me
>grind for a decade attempting to assist make superintelligence to remedy most cancers or no matter
>largely nobody cares for first 7.5 years, then for two.5 years everybody hates you for the whole lot
>get up in the future to a whole bunch of messages: “look i made you right into a twink ghibli fashion haha”
Altman additionally modified his profile image on X to a Ghibli-style picture, which helped to kick off the pattern we’re now seeing wherein individuals are utilizing the tech to create Studio Ghibli-style pictures or add a Studio Ghibli filter to current pictures. Even the White House obtained in on the act with a massively controversial tweet that sparked a serious backlash on-line.
It’s been 24 hours since OpenAI unexpectedly shook the AI picture world with 4o picture era.
Here are the 14 most mindblowing examples to this point (100% AI-generated):
1. Studio ghibli fashion memespic.twitter.com/E38mBnPnQh
— Barsee 🐶 (@heyBarsee) March 26, 2025
Now, feedback beforehand issued by Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Japanese animation home Studio Ghibli, are effervescent again up once more to specific the legendary filmmaker’s distaste for automated animation.
Studio Ghibli is in fact well-known for its meticulously animated, hand-drawn scenes and its dedication to the craft. The greatest Ghibli motion pictures, corresponding to Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Princess Mononoke, are beloved as a lot for the standard of their animation as their tales and characters.
The use of generative AI to repeat the Ghibli fashion has precipitated some to level out that doing so flies instantly in face of Miyazaki’s ethos on the creation of artwork. In 2016, in a widely-circulated clip from NHK’s documentary collection NHK Special: Hayao Miyazaki — The One Who Never Ends, Miyazaki was proven an AI-generated monster with “creepy” motion that may have been utilized to a zombie online game. The individual main the demo defined that AI may “current us grotesque actions that we people can’t think about.”
In response, Miyazaki stated: “Every morning, not in current days, I see my buddy who has a incapacity,” Miyazaki stated. “It’s so exhausting for him simply to do a excessive 5; his arm with stiff muscle can’t attain out to my hand. Now, pondering of him, I can’t watch these things and discover it attention-grabbing. Whoever creates these things has no concept what ache is.”
“I might by no means want to incorporate this expertise into my work in any respect,” Miyazaki added. “I strongly really feel that that is an insult to life itself.”
Near the tip of the clip, after listening to that the animators’ aim is to create a machine that “attracts footage like people do,” Miyazaki stated: “I really feel like we’re nearing to the tip of the instances. We people are shedding religion in ourselves.”
A reminder of Miyazaki’s tackle AI: “I might by no means want to incorporate this expertise into my work in any respect. … that is an insult to life itself … I really feel like we’re nearing the tip of instances … We people are shedding religion in ourselves.” pic.twitter.com/ubAnVMlio5
— Duncan Reyburn (@duncanreyburn) May 5, 2024
Of course, Miyazaki’s feedback got here effectively earlier than the generative AI tech we all know at the moment hit the headlines, however it stands to cause he would have the same opinion of what’s occurring on-line this week.
That’s a sentiment shared by actress and director Zelda Williams, who took to social media to hitch the backlash.
“People are gleefully sharing ‘Studio Ghibli fashion’ AI memes and photographs, as if the person himself wouldn’t completely despise the technological piracy and unfavorable results on the environment.
“Anyway, go watch Princess Mononoke in theaters tonight, and f*** AI.”
Then, in a subsequent submit, Williams continued: “The quantity of ‘get used to it’, ‘it’s enjoyable’, ‘cease whining’ that I see in response to anti-AI sentiments is wild.
“I can’t cease you from utilizing the silly, water losing, s**tty facsimile machines, in the identical manner you’ll be able to’t cease me from speaking about how deeply empty life will change into if we relegate the pursuit of artwork or information to a machine as a result of some individuals don’t like the trouble of studying, whether or not that’s a creative talent or homework at school.
“Lazy doesn’t simply have an effect on the physique, it rots the thoughts.”
Roger Clark, the actor behind Red Dead Redemption’s Arthur Morgan, additionally slammed this newest AI pattern. Taking to X / Twitter, Clark stated:
“This Studio Ghibli stuff is so miserable. It appears that there’s a brand new breed of ‘artist’ that invests completely nothing into their artistic course of. You can’t kind a string of phrases right into a immediate a few instances and faux it’s a creative course of.
“You’re not even arising with your individual fashion. You’re piggybacking off of another person’s exhausting work and inspiration. You’re a lazy thief.
“You’re hurting the unique artwork, you’re hurting your viewers and also you’re hurting your self.”
In a newer tweet, Altman stated: “one man’s slop is one other man’s treasure.”
There at the moment are questions being raised about whether or not the AI mannequin was educated on Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli’s work, and, in that case, whether or not OpenAI had a license to do this coaching.
OpenAI, which is already combating copyright lawsuits over ChatGPT, stated the brand new software would take a “conservative method” in the way in which it mimics the aesthetics of particular person artists.
“We added a refusal which triggers when a person makes an attempt to generate a picture within the fashion of a dwelling artist,” it stated. But the corporate added in a press release that it “permits broader studio kinds — which individuals have used to generate and share some really pleasant and impressed unique fan creations.”
Generative AI is among the hottest subjects inside the online game and leisure industries, which have each suffered large layoffs lately. Generative AI to this point has drawn criticism from gamers and creators attributable to a mixture of moral points, rights points, and AI’s struggles to provide content material audiences really get pleasure from. For occasion, Keywords Studios tried to create an experimental sport internally utilizing fully AI. The sport failed, with Keywords citing to buyers that AI was “unable to switch expertise.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
