Just days after OpenAI launched its most advanced AI image generator to date, a social media trend imitating the work of Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli is demonstrating both the technology’s power and the copyright concerns it raises.
The latest update to GPT-4o, released Tuesday, features many practical advancements, including more accurate text rendering and the ability to follow more detailed, complex prompts. But it has also been trained at length on a “vast variety of image styles,” according to a post on OpenAI’s website, stunning users with its ability to generate still images and videos reminiscent of their favorite animations, from “South Park” to classic claymation.
But one style quickly flooded X and Instagram, as users of ChatGPT (and OpenAI’s text-to-video service, Sora) began emulating the work of beloved animation studio behind movies like “Spirited Away” and “Howl’s Moving Castle.”
Some recreated scenes from pop culture or politics in the Japanese company’s iconic style, including a reworked trailer for “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” scenes from “The Sopranos,” and Donald Trump and JD Vance’s heated real-life White House exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Unsurprisingly, some of the most viral posts put a Ghibli spin on popular memes, including the “distracted boyfriend,” the “bro explaining” meme (pictured top) and the infamous image of Ben Affleck smoking. Another viral X post depicted the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, playing with cutlery — an image based on the recent video of the billionaire balancing spoons during a dinner hosted by Trump in New Jersey.
Also widely shared, however, is a 2016 video in which Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki describes AI-generated art as an “insult to life itself.” Miyazaki is known for his hand-drawn animation and painstaking frame-by-frame method.
“I am utterly disgusted,” he says in the video, responding to a video of a monster character generated using text prompts. “If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it, but I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.”
OpenAI’s updated image generator has also prompted renewed discussions over the role of AI and art. It comes just weeks after nearly 4,000 people signed an open letter calling on Christie’s auction house to cancel a first-of-its-kind sale dedicated solely to AI art over concerns that the programs used to create some generative digital pieces are trained on copyrighted work and exploit human artists.
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman made light of the trend on X, joking that after “a decade trying to help make superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever” it was Studio Ghibli images that had generated viral interest in his work.
“Mostly no one cares for first 7.5 years, then for 2.5 years everyone hates you for everything,” he wrote. “Wake up one day to hundreds of messages: ‘Look I made you into a twink Ghibli style haha’” Altman added, referring to a gay slang term for men who are young, boyish and slim.
As is often the case with AI-generated art, the images raise various copyright questions — not only around Studio Ghibli’s work but of the images being reimagined. When CNN prompted ChatGPT to reproduce some of the Ghibli-style memes, the service refused, saying that ” the request didn’t follow our content policy.”
