Ghibli creator Miyazaki would never approve of the Ghibli AI trend

UPDATED: Mar 27, 2025 23:31 IST

If you've scrolled through social media in the past 48 hours, you’ll know the internet doesn’t look like itself anymore. It looks like a Studio Ghibli movie. From profile pictures to political memes, timelines are bursting with soft pastel portraits, magical landscapes, and doe-eyed characters — all created at lightning speed by ChatGPT’s latest AI image generator. It’s a digital dream that has millions hooked. But beneath the innocent beauty of this viral Ghibli trend lies a much deeper, more uncomfortable question: Is this the future of creativity, or its funeral?

OpenAI’s new image generation feature is, by its own admission, its most advanced yet. The technology doesn't just mimic the Ghibli aesthetic — it nails it. The warm glow, the impossibly expressive faces, the hand-drawn texture that defined films like Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro — all recreated in seconds. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined in on the fun, posting a Ghibli-style portrait of himself, joking that the internet had transformed him overnight.

And the internet responded as it always does: with chaos, humour, and obsession. Thousands of users began flooding platforms with their AI-generated Ghibli selves, reimagined celebrities, and entire fake movie posters. It felt like the entire digital world had been lovingly hand-painted by Hayao Miyazaki’s own team — only it hadn’t.

That’s where the story turns.

Amid the deluge of AI-generated nostalgia, one old clip started circulating — an uncomfortable reminder of what we might be losing. In a 2016 NHK documentary, The One Who Never Ends, Miyazaki is shown a student project powered by machine-generated animation. His reaction is chilling: disgust, disappointment, and a quiet warning about the erosion of human effort in art.

For Miyazaki, animation isn’t just an aesthetic — it’s an act of devotion. His films were painstakingly drawn, frame by frame, over years of labour. The gentle sway of grass in Princess Mononoke, the flicker of lanterns in Spirited Away — none of it came easy. It was all earned.

And now, in 2025, millions are churning out that same aesthetic in seconds, without sweat, without sacrifice.

This isn’t the first time AI-generated art has sparked controversy. We’ve already seen machines win art competitions, imitate the brushstrokes of Van Gogh and Dali, and sell digital paintings for astronomical prices. But the Ghibli trend cuts deeper because it’s not just about art — it’s about memory and emotion.

Studio Ghibli films became cultural treasures because they carried the weight of human experience. They taught us to pause, to dream, to ache. AI can replicate the look, but not the soul.

And that’s the danger.

Because if beauty can be mass-produced at the tap of a button, what happens to the artists? The students, illustrators, and animators who once spent years perfecting their craft? How do they compete with an algorithm that works faster, cheaper, and without fatigue?

The Ghibli-ification of the internet is a moment of wonder — but also a warning. We may be celebrating the magic of technology today, but tomorrow we may wake up in a world where the magic of human creativity is no longer needed.