Studio Ghibli meets Silicon Valley: A powerful new AI tool is turning the internet’s imagination into a copyright battlefield.
No week without AI news as the technology advances in a rapid pace. OpenAI's latest update to its multimodal model GPT-4o has sparked a viral trend online, allowing users to transform photos and videos into stunning animations that closely resemble the iconic style of Studio Ghibli. What began as a playful exploration of AI’s creative potential has quickly evolved into a heated debate over copyright and artistic integrity. While social media celebrates the nostalgic beauty of these AI-generated images, artists and legal experts raise serious concerns about consent and intellectual property. Here’s everything you need to know about the latest AI innovation.
Ghibli Wave on Social Media
With the release of GPT-4o, OpenAI introduced its most advanced image generator yet, now built into ChatGPT. According to OpenAI, the model was trained on a “vast variety of image styles,” allowing it to produce detailed visuals across many artistic forms. Despite the range of possibilities, most users gravitated toward one particular aesthetic: the beloved animation style of Studio Ghibli. Social media quickly filled with Ghibli-style recreations of photos, memes, and even famous scenes—such as a reimagined trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
Some of the most viral posts applied the style to memes like the “distracted boyfriend,” the “bro explaining” image, or Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette. Others transformed political moments, such as Donald Trump and JD Vance's interaction with President Zelensky, into whimsical Ghibli-like scenes. A resurfaced 2016 video shows Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki describing AI-generated imagery as an “insult to life itself,” rejecting its place in his creative process. Known for his hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animations, Miyazaki’s statement reignited concerns over authenticity and respect for traditional artistry. Studio Ghibli has not commented on the recent wave of AI-generated content mimicking its iconic style.
Legal and Ethical Grey Zones
As stunning as the AI results are, they open up complex legal and ethical questions. Several lawsuits have already been filed against companies like OpenAI and Midjourney for allegedly using copyrighted material in their training data. Artists like Sarah Andersen argue that their works have been used without permission, and that AI-generated content threatens their livelihood. While OpenAI hasn’t confirmed whether Studio Ghibli’s films were used in training, the resemblance is uncanny—and troubling to many. Until clearer regulations exist, the line between inspiration and infringement remains dangerously blurry.
Here are my two cents on that: I don’t think the legal and creative questions are all that new. Artists – especially in the music industry – have been suing each other over art that appears too similar for many decades, with countless examples to point to. The major criticism of AI – that it's not creative because it only reworks existing material – doesn’t seem like a real issue to me, for two reasons. First, even though AI can create something entirely new using different styles, people "strangely" don’t seem interested in that. Instead, they prefer recreating things they already know, just slightly changed. There's a reason why films based on existing IPs are almost always more successful than original ones.
Second, the argument that AI isn’t creative because everything it produces already exists can be answered with a question: Have you ever seen a Tarantino film? An Edgar Wright film? In my opinion, creativity is about connecting two things that seemingly have nothing to do with each other – and explaining that connection. The more AI is trained with human stories and material in general, the more distant the related elements it connects will become. As a result, the connections will appear more complex and less obvious – which is exactly what we tend to perceive as creative.
Do you think graphic designers still have a future? Do you like the Ghibli memes? Tell us in the comments!