AI-generated art has recently surged in popularity, particularly visuals inspired by the beloved style of Studio Ghibli. OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT update allows users to instantly create or edit images into Ghibli-inspired visuals.
This sparked a trend where memes, selfies, and even celebrities like Elon Musk and Sam Altman have shared their Ghibli-style images.
One collection of memes transformed into this style became viral on social media, gaining over 40 million views in a few days.
It's been 24 hours since OpenAI unexpectedly shook the AI image world with 4o image generation.
— Barsee 🐶 (@heyBarsee) March 26, 2025
Here are the 14 most mindblowing examples so far (100% AI-generated):
1. Studio ghibli style memespic.twitter.com/E38mBnPnQh
However, this trend has sparked backlash among Studio Ghibli’s dedicated fanbase, who view these AI-generated images as problematic rather than playful.
Studio Ghibli is respected worldwide for its handmade animation style. Each movie involves around 60,000 to 70,000 individual frames, hand-drawn and painted using watercolors. Emphasizing this effort, a fan on X (formerly Twitter) shared a four-second clip from “The Wind Rises,” which took one animator 15 months to complete.
They quoted a significant exchange from the documentary “10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki,” where Miyazaki acknowledges the animator’s effort with a simple, “Good job,” adding, “But it was worth it.”
Since Studio Ghibli is trending, worth noting the mind-boggling effort Hayao Miyazaki and his team put into a film.
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) March 26, 2025
Each has 60k-70k frames, all hand-drawn and painted with water color.
This 4-second clip (“The Wind Rises”) took one animator 15 months to do.
In the documentary… pic.twitter.com/BwvipsyVCl
Social media reactions reflect strong sentiments from Ghibli enthusiasts. One user expressed disappointment, stating, “Irony is dead, but it’s pretty depressing to see Ghibli A.I. slop on the timeline—Miyazaki famously thinks A.I. art is disgusting, and he’s spent the last 50 years making art about environmental waste for petty human uses.”
Another user criticized the trivialization of Miyazaki’s work, remarking, “Miyazaki spent his entire life building one of the most expansive and imaginative bodies of work, all so you could rip it off and use it as a filter for your vacation photos. Protect artists.”
Miyazaki spent his entire life building one of the most expansive and imaginative bodies of work, all so you could rip it off and use it as a filter for your vacation photos.
— Robbie Shilstone (@shilstone_arts) March 26, 2025
Not into this one bit. Protect artists.
OpenAI has stolen Studio Ghibli's artwork & these morons are cheering and clapping for it as if this crap has actually acheived anything. They're literally advertising a plagarism program that hasn't compensated nor sought permission from Stuido Ghibli. Fuck these people. https://t.co/ogB4vjJ6CG
— AussieScreenwriter (@AusScreenwriter) March 26, 2025
Miyazaki’s Disapproval of AI Art
Ghibli founder, Hayao Miyazaki has openly expressed his disapproval of AI-generated art. In the 2016 NHK documentary “Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki,” Miyazaki reacted strongly to an AI-generated animation depicting grotesque creatures, stating, “I am utterly disgusted… I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
He elaborated, emphasizing AI’s lack of empathy and understanding of human struggles, referencing a friend with a disability. Miyazaki’s stance has resurfaced amidst this current trend, leading fans to question the ethics and authenticity of AI art.
This controversy raises questions about creativity and intellectual property. Is AI-generated content genuinely creative, or just sophisticated imitation? Fans argue that replicating Ghibli’s style cheaply diminishes the value of human creativity.
