The backlash against ChatGPT's Studio Ghibli filter

OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, is no stranger to controversy, especially from creatives who feel threatened by its applications. The artificial intelligence company's most recent update to ChatGPT has caused consternation among fans of a beloved Japanese animation studio with a trend that seems to run counter to everything the studio's founders stood for. The drama has also revived concerns among artists about the lengths OpenAI will go to use copyrighted creative work.

Why did the filter cause so much drama?

OpenAI's update to GPT-4o, which was integrated into its image creator in ChatGPT, included "more accurate text rendering" and the "ability to follow more detailed, complex prompts," said CNN. The program has been extensively trained on a "vast variety of image styles," OpenAI said on its website. This has led users to produce still images and videos in recognizable signature animation styles, from "South Park" to claymation. One style recently went viral with its ability to emulate the work of Studio Ghibli, the "beloved animation studio behind movies like 'Spirited Away' and 'Howl's Moving Castle,'" CNN said.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took notice of the style's popularity and changed his X profile picture to a Ghiblified version of himself, posting a joke about the filter's sudden popularity surpassing his years of work "trying to help make superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever." Social media users quickly found a variety of uses for the filter, such as posting Ghibli-style selfies and memes. Some of the images took a decidedly dark turn, including "renderings of violent or dark images, like the World Trade Center towers falling on Sept. 11 and the murder of George Floyd," said The New York Times. The juxtaposition of such violence "against the innocence of Ghibli's beguiling style gave the images an unsettling quality," said The Standard.

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Fans of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, clapped back at the proliferation of the filter, noting that the famed animator had made his take on AI clear: Miyazaki was "utterly disgusted" by an AI animation demonstration he was shown in 2016, adding that he would "never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all" in a video of the meeting. "I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself," he added.

What issues does the backlash illuminate?

The trend, in addition to being deemed an affront to Miyazaki's legacy, highlights "ethical concerns about artificial intelligence tools trained on copyrighted creative works" and what that means for the "future livelihoods of human artists," said The Associated Press. The filter is another "clear example of how companies like OpenAI just do not care about the work of artists and the livelihoods of artists," Karla Ortiz, an artist suing other AI image generators for copyright infringement, said to the AP. The company uses Ghibli's "branding, its name, its work, its reputation" to promote Open AI products. "It's an insult. It's exploitation."

OpenAI and Altman's lack of response to the White House's heavily criticized use of the filter to depict a woman from the Dominican Republic recently detained by ICE agents speaks volumes about the shift in the relationship between Silicon Valley and Trump. The "social and political pressure" to avoid distancing themselves from the administration's actions is "overwhelming," said The Verge. Whatever the company's internal opinions are, it's "bad business to get feted by a vindictive president and then turn around to criticize his policies, particularly amid a larger Silicon Valley rightward turn." Beyond that, there's "something deeper at play" because the filter itself is a "minor echo of the Trump era's utter disregard for other human beings."

Amid all this drama, Gkids, the North American distributor for Studio Ghibli films, screened a 4K restoration of the 1997 Ghibli classic, "Princess Mononoke." In a time when "technology tries to replicate humanity," the studio was thrilled that "audiences value a theatrical experience that respects and celebrates Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's masterpiece in all its cinematic hand-drawn glory," Chance Huskey, the VP of distribution for GKid, said in a statement.