A new craze was born when OpenAI’s latest release of its ChatGPT generative AI (GAI) tool was able to produce images in the style of Japan’s legendary and award-winning Studio Ghibli.
Suddenly, people were Ghibli-fying everything from family photos, to memes, to scenes of real-life violence such as school shootings.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, posted that as a result of the new Ghibli feature ChatGPT had added one million users in the past hour, compared to two years ago, when it added that many users in five days.
ChatGPT visits reached over four billion in the first 28 days of March for the first time, according to market research firm Similarweb.
But is it legal?
As Business Insider reported, after a few days of Ghibli-philia users started to get notices that the images were no longer available due to content policy restrictions. According to the publication, “it’s clear that OpenAI has made a major change in its approach to copyright and image generation lately.”
In the wake of the Ghibli craze, OpenAI released a System Card that states
The model can generate images that resemble the aesthetics of some artists’ work when their name is used in the prompt. This has raised important questions and concerns within the creative community. In response, we opted to take a conservative approach with this version of 4o image generation, as we learn more about how 4o image generation is used by the creative community. We added a refusal which triggers when a user attempts to generate an image in the style of a living artist.
Studio Ghibli is a business entity, not a living artist, but its signature style was created by studio founder Hayao Miyazaki (age 84). He has referred to some examples of AI-generated animation as “an insult to life itself.”
As the New Yorker explains, the work of the studio
is known for its hand-drawn imagery, lushly organic color palettes, epic narratives, and evocation of both the emotional ambiguities of childhood and the twisting path to becoming an adult.
Business Insider journalists tested out the new policy and found that the paid ChatGPT service continued to generate images in the style of Studio Ghibli.
However, the free version refused to cooperate, generating the message:
I can’t generate images in the style of Studio Ghibli because it is a copyrighted animation studio, and its artistic style is protected.
(This is wrong, by the way. The WORKS of an animation studio may be protected by copyright law, but the studio itself is not.)
While millions of people celebrated their new ability to make Ghibli-esque images, other criticized the results while questioning what could be done about the situation.
For example, an article in Crunchbase stated that
One of the key problems with AI-generated art is that while specific works are protected under copyright, style itself is not. Studio Ghibli’s films are a unique artistic canon, composed of thousands of unique illustrations, all of which are protected under copyright law. But an AI model that has been trained on these works can produce art that “looks like” a Studio Ghibli creation without directly copying a specific frame…
From a legal standpoint, this distinction creates a loophole that AI companies exploit. They argue that since the generated images are not direct copies, they do not infringe on copyright. This technicality makes it incredibly difficult for studios such as Ghibli to take legal action against AI-generated replicas.
The article concludes:
The entire premise of copyright is that those who invest time, effort and creativity into producing something original should not have their work taken, modified or commercialized by others without permission. AI-generated art that mimics Studio Ghibli’s distinct look undermines this principle by allowing machines — and the companies that operate them — to benefit from the studio’s decades of artistic innovation without any form of compensation or credit.
This raises the question of whether a new form of IP protection is needed just to prevent this kind of “free riding” on the artistic work of others.
The Ghibli examples may also influence the courts that are now considering whether using copyrighted images, without permission, to train GAI tools such as ChatGPT is allowed under the copyright law doctrine of “fair use.”
According to IP lawyers interviewed by Variety,
The viral Studio Ghibli-style images trend could strengthen arguments that OpenAI’s 4o image model is infringing copyright…
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