Fans of Studio Ghiblithe famous Japanese animation study behind “Chihiro’s trip” (original title “Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi”) and other very dear films, they delighted this week when a new version of chatgpt allowed them Transform popular Internet memes or personal photos into the distinctive style of the founder of Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki.
However, the trend also highlighted ethical concerns about artificial intelligence tools trained with creative works protected by copyright and what that means for the future support of human artists. Miyazaki, 84, known for his hand drawing approach and his imaginative narratives, has expressed skepticism about the role of AI in animation.
Janu Lingeswaran was not thinking much about that when he uploaded a photo of his three -year -old Ragdoll breed cat, Mali, in the new Chatgpt image tool on Wednesday. Then he asked ChatgPP to convert her in the Ghibli style, instantly creating an anime image that looked like Mali, but also one of the meticulously drawn feline characters that populate Miyazaki’s films, such as “My neighbor Totoro” (“Tonari No Totoro”) or “Kiki, home deliveries” (“
“I really fell in love with the result,” Lingeswaran said, a businessman who lives near Aquison, Germany. “We are thinking of printing and hanging it on the wall.”
Similar results gave the Ghibli style to iconic images, such as the casual appearance of the Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec in a shirt and a hand in their pocket, on the way to winning a silver medal at the 2024 Olympic Games. Or the famous meme “Disaster Girl” of a four -year -old girl turning to the camera with a slight smile while a fire in a house burns in the background.
The creator of Chatgpt, Openai, who faces demands for copyright about his badge chatbot, has largely encouraged the experiments of “Ghiblification” And its executive director, Sam Altman, changed his profile on the social media platform X to a Ghibli -style portrait. In a technical document published on Tuesday, the company had said that the new tool would take a “conservative approach” in the way in which the aesthetics of individual artists mimic.
“We have added a refusal that is activated when a user tries to generate an image in the style of a living artist,” he said. But the company added in a statement that “it allows broader study styles, which people have used to generate and share some original creations of truly charming and inspired fans.”
Studio Ghibli in Japan declined to comment on Friday.
As users published their Ghibli -style images on social networks, Miyazaki’s previous comments about AI animation also began to resurface. When Miyazaki was presented with a demonstration of AI in 2016, he said he was “totally disgusted” by the exhibition, according to documentary images of the interaction. The person who demonstrated animation, who had a body twisting and crawling down the head, explained that AI could “present grotesque movements that humans cannot imagine.” It could be used for zombie movements, said the person.
That led Miyazaki to tell a story.
“Every morning, not in recent days, I see my friend who has a disability,” said Miyazaki. “It is so difficult for him simply to make a hand greeting; his arm with rigid muscle cannot reach my hand. Now, thinking about him, I can’t see these things and find them interesting. Who creates these things has no idea what pain is.”
He said that “I would never want to incorporate this technology in my work at all.”
“I feel strongly that this is an insult to life itself,” he added.
Josh Weigensberg, a partner of the law firm Pryor Cashman, said that a question that raises the art of the Ghibli style is whether the AI model was trained in the work of Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli. That in turn “raises the question of, ‘well, do they have a license or permission to do that training or not?'” He said.
Openai did not answer a question on Thursday about whether he had a license.
Weigensberg added that if the rights of a work were transferred for training, it could make sense that a company allowed this type of use. But if this type of use is happening without consent and compensation, he said, it could be “problematic.”
Weigensberg said there is a general principle “in bird view” that the “style” is not protected by copyright. But sometimes, he said, what people are really thinking when they say “style” could be “more specific, discernible elements, discreet of a work of art,” he said.
“In the case of ‘The incredible vagabond castle’ (” Hauru no Ugoku Shiro “) or ‘Chihiro’s trip’, you could freeze a frame in any of those films and point out specific things, and then look at the result of the generative AI and see identical or substantially similar elements,” he said. “Simply, stop in,” oh! Well, the style is not protected under the copyright law. “That is not necessarily the end of the investigation.”
The artist Karla Ortiz, who grew up watching Miyazaki’s films and has demanded other generators of AI images for copyright violations in a case that is still pending, described him as “another clear example of how companies like OpenAi simply do not care about the work of the artists and the livelihood of the artists.”
“That is using the Ghibli brand, your name, your work, your reputation, to promote (OpenAi) products,” Ortiz said. “It’s an insult. It is exploitation.”
Ortiz was further enraged when the administration of President Donald Trump joined the memes trend on Thursday, using the official X of the White House to publish a Ghibli -style image of a woman from the Dominican Republic crying after being recently arrested by United States immigration agents. The White House and Openai did not immediately respond to requests for comments on how the image was made.
“Seeing something as brilliant, as wonderful as Miyazaki’s work to be shattered to generate something so vile,” Ortiz wrote on social networks, adding that he expected Studio Ghibli to demand “with everything” to OpenAi for this.