Ah, yes. Another day, another AI controversy.
This time, OpenAI’s image generator has unlocked a new, completely original ability: spitting out images that just so happen to look exactly like something Studio Ghibli would make.
Naturally, the internet is obsessed. Everything—from family travel photos to political memes—can now be transformed into an “artwork” reminiscent of a Studio Ghibli-esque film.
The result? A flood of AI-generated images that evoke the studio’s signature aesthetic—soft lighting, dreamlike compositions, and wistful expressions. It’s like having Hayao Miyazaki himself personally watercolor your cat photos, except… well, he didn’t. A bunch of code did.
And that leaves real artists, lawyers, and anyone who actually cares about originality and artistry frustrated, to say the least.
AI “Ghiblification”: The Trend Nobody Asked For
You’ve seen it by now. Those captivating, hand-painted-looking AI-generated images flooding your feed, reimagining old memes and cartoon characters in the style of the beloved Japanese animation studio.
While the trend may seem harmless, it raises familiar questions about originality and artistic labor. After all, generative AI isn’t “inspired” by Studio Ghibli; it doesn’t “learn” styles in the way human artists do. It analyzes vast datasets of existing work and replicates patterns. In this case, those patterns happen to align suspiciously with Studio Ghibli’s decades of painstaking craftsmanship.
And because AI doesn’t need sleep or dignity, it can do this all day long, pumping out images at a speed no human could match.
But is that fair to the artists who actually developed this style? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In a similar issue, photographer Jingna Zhang recently voiced frustration after discovering one of her photos had been processed through OpenAI’s model without permission. Her experience underscores a broader issue: AI tools frequently rely on artists’ work without credit or compensation, then produce derivative outputs at an industrial scale.
Is It Copyright Infringement? Lol, Define “Infringement”
Here’s where things get frustrating. You’d think this would be a textbook case of intellectual property theft, right? Well, nope.
Copyright protects specific works—not artistic styles—meaning that while Studio Ghibli owns Spirited Away, it doesn’t own the general look and feel of its films. This loophole allows AI companies like OpenAI to profit from stylistic imitation without technically infringing on intellectual property.
Critics argue this is a cynical exploitation of legal ambiguity. Defenders counter that all art is derivative—though that argument rings hollow when the “derivation” is done by algorithms trained on unlicensed datasets.
OpenAI’s Response: “We’re Definitely Not Copying Ghibli (But Also, We Are)”
Unsurprisingly, the backlash has been swift and spectacular. Artists are furious, Studio Ghibli is probably so done with this timeline, and OpenAI? They’ve made some totally meaningful changes to their image generation tool.
Now, instead of AI producing exact Ghibli knockoffs, it produces images that just happen to have:
✅ Soft, hand-painted lighting
✅ Nostalgic color grading
✅ Other aesthetic choices that totally aren’t lifted from Ghibli (wink)
The changes are superficial at best – it does little to address concerns about artistic appropriation. And as of this writing, they completely disabled the image generation feature of ChatGPT for free users, which seems less an ethical stance than a strategic retreat.
Where Does This Leave Us?
Well, if you’re an artist, probably feeling a mix of rage and existential dread. If you’re an AI enthusiast, you’re probably still feeding prompts into ChatGPT to make your doodles look like a lost Miyazaki storyboard. And if you’re Studio Ghibli? I can’t even imagine how exasperated they probably are.
But hey, at least the AI-generated pictures are pretty and funny, right?
In the meantime, we’re probably watching entire generations becoming disillusioned with the value of hard work and perfecting their craft. Who knows, we might be witnessing the end of an era.
(Hopefully not – or we might never see masterpieces again, like this three-second clip from The Boy and The Heron, which took Miyazaki and his team one year and three months to perfect.)
