Ghibli-style anime refers to the animation style and storytelling approach associated with Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese animation studio.
ChatGPT’s latest ability to generate Ghibli-style anime images has triggered a flood of online memes while also raising questions on copyright. OpenAI, the company which owns the AI chatbot, is facing a barrage of lawsuits over copyright violations from news publishers, artists and musicians.
Ghibli-style anime refers to the animation style and storytelling approach associated with Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese animation studio founded by Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki.
The studio created classic animated films like “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Princess Mononoke.” Some of the unique features of this hand drawn art is soft and expressive characters with emotive eyes with vibrant colour palettes.
Viral images
The latest version capable of generating Ghibli-style anime is powered by GPT-4o, the company’s highest-performing model. It allows users to generate sophisticated results by entering precise prompts, which was not the case before. This feature will be limited to paid users for now while free users can continue to avail the chatbot’s usual image generation capabilities.
This Ghibli-style feature was intended to be released for free, but the unexpected success of the model prompted OpenAI to limit this to its paid users. CEO Sam Altman also changed his profile picture on X to catch up with the trend.
Social media has been flooded with Ghibli-style AI generated images of legendary memes, politicians and Hollywood movies. Some of the viral ones are Ghibli versions of Elon Musk with US President Donald Trump, “The Lord of the Rings,” and a recreation of 9/11 terror attack on the twin towers in the US.
The White House also shared, on X, a similar AI generated image of a felon, a person who has been convicted of a serious crime, being handcuffed by a US immigration officer.
OpenAI responds
When asked by news agency AFP on whether its latest image generation capability threatened Studio Ghibli’s intellectual property, OpenAI said it was still fine-tuning its model and intends to give users as much creative freedom as possible.
A company spokesperson said, “We continue to prevent generations in the style of individual living artists, but we do permit broader studio styles, which people have used to generate and share some truly delightful and inspired original fan creations.”
“We’re always learning from real-world use and feedback, and we’ll keep refining our policies as we go,” she added.
Hayao Miyazaki’s old video resurfaces
Social media users were also quick to post a 2016 video in which the studio’s legendary director Hayao Miyazaki lashing out at AI during a demonstration by the studio’s staff.
An English translation of his remark reads, “I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
AFP also quoted artist and illustrator Jayd “Chira” Ait-Kaci’s post on Bluesky social media platform. The trend “is especially insidious and malicious because of how outspokenly scathing Miyazaki has been toward the tech. It’s always about contempt for artists, every time.” he said.
OpenAI is aggressively lobbying the White House and US Congress to make the use of copyrighted content by AI companies a part of the fair use doctrine. Fair use regulations already apply to search engines, satire and memes online. This allows companies to freely use copyrighted material without permission.
OpenAI’s GPUs are melting
Altman also said the company had put in “a lot of thought into the initial examples” before introducing any technology. He also said ChatGPT’s GPUs are “melting” due to heavy demand to generate Ghibli-style images and hence “some rate limits” will be introduced for raising requests.