The founder of a Japanese anime studio known for major titles like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro has expressed condemnation for AI art in the past, but after a new development in the tech space, he is most likely appalled.
“I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all,” Ghibli Studio creator Hayao Miyazaki said in 2016.
Now 84 years old, he hasn’t said a word about the surge of Ghibli-style filtered images the popular AI bot ChatGPT has been creating, but certain fans think it’s a disaster.
“Look, call me the fun police or whatever but Miyazaki didn’t spend his entire life cultivating a distinct artistic identity so that AI could reduce decades of his discipline and integrity to meme fodder,” one X user wrote.
OpenAI’s release of the GPT-4o image generator this week is responsible for this new phenomenon. It is available only through the paid version of the app.
Esteemed creative Puerto Rican artist, Karla Ortiz, said that it was an insult and exploitation.
“That’s using Ghibli’s branding, their name, their work, their reputation, to promote [OpenAI] products.”
Also, the daughter of late renowned actor and funny-man Robin Williams was quick to express her disgust.
“People are gleefully sharing ‘Studio Ghibli style’ AI memes and photos, as though the man himself wouldn’t absolutely despise the technological piracy and negative effects on our environment,” Zelda Williams said on Instagram Wednesday.
CEO Sam Altman even updated his X profile picture to a Ghibli-themed selfie, showcasing the scale of the development.
I saw the beautiful 4K IMAX version of Princess Mononoke last night… then got out and saw this shit. Do you morons truly value art so little that it’s just a filter for your profile pic? Pay a fucking artist and make something real you gremlins. https://t.co/A0wK0j54Fk
— Michael Berardini (@mbirdini) March 27, 2025
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It’s been ‘melting’ OpenAI’s GPUs, Altman says
The artificial intelligence CEO responsible for this business says the rapid increase in usage of the app’s newly updated version has put a great deal of stress on his graphics processing units.
“It’s super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT, but our GPUs are melting,” Altman wrote on X. “We are going to temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient. Hopefully won’t be long!”
Running a large language model program with these capabilities requires vast amounts of energy and robust cloud infrastructure. The popularity of the new anime filters started putting strain on the software within only a couple of days.
Copyright concerns have been running amok, as you can probably imagine.
“Imagine being Miyazaki, pouring decades of heart and soul into making this transcendent beautiful tender style of anime, and then seeing it get sloppified by linear algebra,” another X user eloquently said.
People have been trying out other filters like South Park and The Simpsons, but the Japanese anime option has proved to be the most widely used.
Studio Ghibli is yet to publicly comment on the matter.
can yall please chill on generating images this is insane our team needs sleep
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 30, 2025
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