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TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is back in the spotlight as ChatGPT, with its GPT-4o model, can now generate images, including ones styled after Studio Ghibli, the renowned Japanese animation studio.
While many fans have embraced this trend with enthusiasm, concerns have been raised about potential copyright infringement and its impact on artists.
A German user, Janu Lingeswaran, uploaded a photo of their cat to the new image creator tool ChatGPT and transformed it into the Ghibli style.
“I really fell in love with the result,” said Lingeswaran, quoted from a report by Associated Press, on Friday, March 28, 2025. “We’re thinking of printing it out and hanging it on the wall."
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, has pushed for this 'Ghiblification' experiment to be widely used.
Even its CEO, Sam Altman, changed his profile picture on social media to an image in the style of Studio Ghibli.
In a technical paper, OpenAI argued that this new tool will take a 'conservative approach' in how it imitates the aesthetics of an artist.
“We added a refusal which triggers when a user attempts to generate an image in the style of a living artist," the statement wrote. But the company added that it “permits broader studio styles—which people have used to generate and share some truly delightful and inspired original fan creations.”
Amid the viral Ghibli-style images on social media, there is an old statement from Hayao Miyazaki, one of the studio's founders, about AI in animation.
In a 2016 documentary, Miyazaki expressed his "disgust" after witnessing an AI demonstration featuring an animation of a body dragging itself forward using its head.
The presenter claimed that AI could generate movements beyond human imagination, such as the eerie, zombie-like motions shown in the demo.
However, Miyazaki had a starkly different reaction.
“Every morning, not in recent days, I see my friend who has a disability,” Miyazaki said.
“It’s so hard for him just to do a high five; his arm with stiff muscle can’t reach out to my hand. Now, thinking of him, I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is."
He said he would “never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.”
“I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself,” he added.
Legal expert Josh Weigensberg highlights the potential copyright issues in using AI to imitate the style of Studio Ghibli. "This raises the question: 'Well, do they have a license or permission to do that training or not?‘” he said.
Weigensberg explained that, from a broad perspective, the general principle is that “style” itself is not subject to copyright.
However, he noted that what people often refer to as “style” may actually involve more specific, identifiable, and distinct elements of a work of art.
According to him, in Studio Ghibli's films like Howl's Moving Castle or Spirited Away, for example, a single frame could be copied to show specific elements.
"You could freeze a frame in any of those films and point to specific things, and then look at the output of generative AI and see identical elements or substantially similar elements in that output,” he said.
“Just stopping at, ‘Oh, well, style isn’t protectable under copyright law.’ That’s not necessarily the end of the inquiry," he concluded.
Artist Karla Ortiz, who is currently suing the AI image creator company for alleged copyright infringement, also condemned this trend.
“That’s using Ghibli’s branding, their name, their work, their reputation, to promote (OpenAI) products It’s an insult. It’s exploitation," Ortiz said.
Ortiz became even more enraged after the administration of President Donald Trump used this trend by uploading Ghibli-style images of a woman who had just been arrested by US immigration agents.
“To see something so brilliant, as wonderful as Miyazaki’s work be butchered to generate something so foul,” Ortiz wrote on social media, expressing her frustration. She also stated that she hoped Studio Ghibli would “sue the hell out of” OpenAI for this.
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