Spirited Away or Stolen Away? AI, Studio Ghibli, and the Battle for Copyrights/AI-Generated Ghibli Studios: Art at a Hidden Carbon Cost

Allison Bennett

Staff Writer

A social media trend emulating the work of Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli began to go viral just days after OpenAI launched its most advanced AI image generator to date, highlighting both the technology’s capabilities and the copyright concerns that have been raised. 

The latest update to GTP-4o features many advancements to this technology, including more accurate text rendering and the ability to follow more complex and detailed prompts,”  according to a post on OpenAI’s website, reports CNN. The new technology allows users to generate still images and videos reminiscent of their favorite animations from South Park to classic Claymation and more. ChatGPT users began flooding social media with Studio Ghibli-styled work made with AI. 

Along with this trend, a 2016 video of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki has been going viral as he describes AI-generated art as an “insult to life itself.” Miyazaki is known for his hand-drawn animation and painstaking frame-by-frame method. “I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it, but I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all,” Miyazaki says in the video, responding to a video of a character generated using text prompts. 

The Associated Press comments that this trend highlights ethical concerns about artificial intelligence tools trained on copyrighted creative works and what that means for the future livelihoods of human artists. This updated image generator has prompted renewed discussions over the role of AI in art, as it comes just weeks after nearly 4,000 people signed an open letter calling on Christie’s auction house to cancel a first-of-its-kind scale dedicated solely to AI art. Many artists are concerned that the new and updated programs used to create these generative pieces are trained on copyrighted work, exploiting human artists. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on social media platform X, “Can yall please chill on generating images this is insane our team needs sleep” and “Our GPUs are melting” due to the vast amount of AI images being generated in the past couple of days writes Asian News International. 

 Beyond the legal issues associated with this advancement, the expansion of artificial intelligence and generative AI has come with a large negative impact on the environment. The United Nations Environmental Programme reports that the increased amount of data centers that house AI servers produce mass amounts of electronic waste, becoming large consumers of water. Relying on critical minerals and rare elements, often mined unsustainably, generative AI also uses massive amounts of electricity, increasing the emission of planet-warming greenhouse gases. MIT News reports  that each time a model is used, the computing hardware in generative AI performs energy consuming operations, with researchers estimating that a single ChatGPT query consumes about five times more electricity than a simple web search.

While it’s important to acknowledge the drawbacks of this technology, artificial intelligence also holds significant promise and potential benefits for society. Artificial intelligence can detect patterns in data, such as anomalies and similarities, and use historical knowledge to accurately predict future outcomes.  AI can be valuable for monitoring the environment and helping governments, businesses, and individuals make more planet-friendly choices. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have identified 9 notable benefits of AI, of them being enhanced healthcare, boosted economic growth, climate change mitigation, advanced transportation, customer service excellence, scientific discovery, enhanced financial services, improved agriculture, and enhanced cybersecurity. 

With there being many benefits and many negatives, researchers still argue over the future of AI, particularly generative AI in the fields of science, healthcare, art, and education.

Image courtesy of Getty Images.