It’s been a month since the internet was flooded with AI-generated ‘Ghibli-fied’ images.
It all started with OpenAI’s new GPT-4o image generation tool launch, followed by Grant Slatton’s post of his family transformed into the Ghibli anime style. Soon, OpenAI added one million users in just an hour due to the virality of the trend. While some couldn’t get enough of these images, some found it deeply unsettling and unethical. Although the internet has moved on to the next hot topic, I keep wondering: was this just another fleeting trend, or a quiet tragedy in disguise?
Founded in 1985 by Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki, Studio Ghibli has always been more than just an animation studio. Its whimsical worlds—films like ‘Spirited Away’ and ‘My Neighbor Totoro’—don’t just tell stories but they feel like memories. The first time I watched a Ghibli movie, I found the characters to be original and deeply moving. There’s so much pain, beauty, and beauty within the pain. And to even imagine that each frame was hand-painted? That felt almost unreal.
But now, Ghibli is everywhere—generated with just a few clicks. Social media is drenched in dreamy AI landscapes and wide-eyed characters. It’s cute. It’s beautiful. It’s bizarre. And somehow…hollow?
Like any great artist, Miyazaki had his struggles with creativity. In the documentary ‘10 years with Hayao Miyazaki’, he’d often be seen wandering and strolling through his neighbourhood, sitting quietly in gardens, visiting art galleries for inspiration. He never started with a plot, but with a single visual which caught a moment or a feeling. Then his team of over a 100 animators would build a world around it. It took them a week to animate just five seconds of a film. That’s the kind of dedication Studio Ghibli’s work holds. So… is AI really doing justice to that?
I understand the temptation. We all want to see ourselves in the Ghibli world. And since not all of us are artists, our only way in is through our beloved ChatGPT and its AI cousins. But at what cost did we step into this painted version of our lives?
Ghibli has inspired countless artists like Takashi Murakami, Julien Ceccaldi, Pippa Dyrlaga, and many more. So why the outrage when AI takes inspiration? Isn’t art, once created, free to inspire others? Like Austin Kleon writes: “Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.” But the problem is, AI isn’t a person. It doesn’t remix; it replicates. It’s a machine, soullessly mimicking a style, without meaning or memory. If you look closely at these AI Ghibli images, you’ll see they’re often generic, barely capturing the essence of a subject. They generalise everyone. It’s not a tribute but it is just a template.
An old clip of Miyazaki from another documentary went viral along the Ghibli trend. In it, he painfully says: “This is an insult to life. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work.” Meanwhile, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, called this a “net win” for society. Copyright issues? Not given a fuck.
I agree that AI is capable of great things; it’s definitely a revolutionary invention. AI can do a lot of things, a lot more than humans and that’s why it’s terrifying. But there’s also a fact that AI, no matter how advanced or well-versed, is still a machine. AI cannot tell how it feels when wind blows through your hair in a field of daisies. It cannot smell the air, it cannot fall in love, it cannot understand the passion of hatred, it cannot understand how it feels to be betrayed—and thus, it cannot create from its emotions. And art is something that’s deeply personal and born from passions within.
Miyazaki spent his entire life building one of the most expansive and imaginative bodies of work, all so you could rip it off and use it as a filter for your vacation photos.
— Robbie Shilstone (@shilstone_arts) March 26, 2025
Not into this one bit. Protect artists.
tremendous alpha right now in sending your wife photos of yall converted to studio ghibli anime pic.twitter.com/FROszdFSfN
— Grant Slatton (@GrantSlatton) March 25, 2025
Imagine being an artist and pouring hours into a piece, only to be told that a machine did it quicker. It makes hard-working artists and designers question their entire path. To some, this may seem like a cute, harmless trend—but to young artists trying to find their voice, it’s disheartening. We can’t stop AI. But we can choose what we consume. We can choose meaningful art over free, replicated images.
While AI art may be faster, it lacks emotion. And in this age of automation, there’s hope—hope that raw, authentic human expression will stand out. That it will remain irreplaceable.
