OpenAI's crimes against Studio Ghibli, copyright, culture and Art
Sam Altman startup PR stunts have gone too far this time!
OpenAI does PR campaigns on Twitter, these are not organic random occurrences by chance. Its updated GPT-4o model producing Ghibli-style anime images was therefore a campaign, to coincide with Google’s launch of Gemini 2.5 pro (thinking), itself an incredible model.
OpenAI has a huge PR and Comms team who have black-hat tendencies in how they do PR stunts:
So when Grant Slatton tweeted “tremendous alpha right now in sending your wife photos of yall converted to studio ghibli anime” and it got like 35,000 likes and suddenly all of Twitter, it wasn’t an accident or a funny viral meme. It was an OpenAI campaign with real dollars behind it. PR is the new black-hat marketing and it’s dystopian beyond belief.
Studio Ghibli-style artwork has gone viral on social media, against the wishes of the founder of the style and the thousands of artistic hours behind the trend. Many of us know and felt this was very painful to witness because Studio Ghibli’s founder Hayao Miyazaki is against this AI copyright spinning. A cute meme to some, but a betrayal of artists everywhere to most.
I feel so bad about this.
OpenAI’s only focus is to get more sales for ChatGPT and in every possible way it can.
Hayao Miyazaki, thoughts on AI are neither cute nor fun. He said "I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all… it’s an insult to life itself." - Source.
Insult to Life
The renowned co-founder of Studio Ghibli, known for masterpieces such as 'Spirited Away' and 'My Neighbor Totoro', had made his stance on artificial intelligence crystal clear years ago. In the resurfaced clip, Miyazaki calls AI-generated animation an “insult to life itself,” emphasising that artificial intelligence cannot comprehend genuine human emotions.
Miyazaki's reaction was notably sparked during a 2016 presentation where he witnessed a grotesquely animated AI-generated creature, which he found deeply unsettling. Nine years later, his style was used as a viral stunt by an AI startup to take attention away from a superior model builder, Google.
There’s something deeply sad about the state of things given the artist’s ideals, and views on AI reproducing their work 1. Given that Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli, has been vocal against AI-generated art, claiming it to be an "insult to life itself," the ethical dimensions intensify.
OpenAI catering off a commoditized version of Miyazaki’s life work for its users for cheap thrills is revolting to me. To blame or hold users of ChatGPT responsible for these crime misses the point.
OpenAI’s PR team themselves made this trend go viral for profit on the labor of the studio in Japan, their entire life’s work. This is copyright violation at its most lucrative and horrible. A lot of people and analysts missed this key point. Twitter/X is not an organic place any longer, it’s fundamentally just a PR echo-bubble, a place where behavior and ideological modification is taking place as campaigns. It’s all orchestrated, it’s not organic!
Generative AI is killing our history of culture
The omens of a ChatGPT world aren’t necessarily good, either. AI promises to free up time. But what if it spares us from learning, writing, painting and exploring the world?
Think about it, if everything is just an imitation of knowledge, art, intimacy and being supposedly augmented by regurgitating AIs, what is the point? That’s not reasoning. The style doesn’t even belong to OpenAI. It’s something way darker than a semantic apocalypse in my view.
OpenAI’s “fair use” of copyright means the world got poorer, not richer. OpenAI has articulated a defense based on the doctrine of fair use, arguing that its data collection practices are legally permissible under this doctrine. They claim that scraping publicly available data for training purposes falls within the boundaries set out by copyright laws. This is the position Microsoft told them to take.
Sam Altman has been shown to have no ethical guidelines in how he conducts his business, as the exodus of co-founders and talent at his company can attest to this. In recent times OpenAI has turned to the national defense sector to help a world of moving fast and killing things. Sam Altman is an ally of Peter Thiel who is a friend of the Trump Administration. Journalists and analysts have also noted that ChatGPT’s political views are moving more to the right.
While ChatGPT is a cash cow for its investors, clearly the AI startup doesn’t have ethics or respecting the work of others top of mind. The ChatGPT Studio Ghibli trend was supposed to depict how awesome GPT-4o is at creating images, but all it did for me was to leave me sick to my stomach. The only thing we can do about this injustice is to speak out.
Is entertainment the primary objective of ChatGPT in this light? Or should those in Silicon Valley be held accountable for their theft and disregard for the creators of creative works? When OpenAI makes something go viral on X or become a meme, it isn’t doing it for anything else than to increase sales. Nor was it a “great day” or week on the internet. It was the personification of AI tyranny with cute vibes. But how many of us actually care enough to realize that?
What has happend to our humanity? Reducing the lives of students and young men and their existence (indeed all ChatGPT users) to a series of ChatGPT prompts, the act of their youth and living becomes only shorter – not better. How popular ChatGPT has become is dystopian sign of the times2.
Less women use ChatGPT not because they are slow adopters or more risk-averse, but because they know this is soul-destroying, they realize it intuitively. They realize the ‘con’ within the ghost in the machine. OpenAI creating a meme out of the lifetime work of a great artist isn’t just disappointing, it’s tragic. One of the most visceral moments in the history of Generative AI so far in 2025. I will myself remember this.
The world is not made a better place by Ghibli-style memes or family portraits. In fact you could argue ChatGPT’s stunning lack of uselessful in the real world necessities such dim-witted diversions into the trash bin of culture. Do I feel the AGI? Fuck you Sam Altman, and your AI capex clowns. Your fantasy and delusions of grandeur and total lack of responsible use of AI.
Indeed, there is a growing skepticism surrounding the promises and hype of artificial intelligence. Microsoft has been pulling back in datacenter commitments already in 2025, while Nvidia’s founder has been desperately trying to exaggerate its capabilities and future.
AI is Eating the world - and going viral!
Sam Altman is a talented networker among the Billionaire class, but who still buys his dreams and talking points? OpenAI’s PR and comms team can “buy” a campaign on X, but cannot even make models as good as Google, Anthropic or China for that matter any longer. If GPT-4.5 has been underwhelming, what do you suppose GPT-5 will be?
I despise the Venture Capitalists and profiteers who have made this possible. I want to see them burn down in their hype. Because if this is the best you can do after spending over $400 Billion in AI Infrastructure (datacenters and AI chips) this year in 2025 (BigTech & OpenAI) while giving so little real value to the world, you don’t deserve to succeed.
I’m left with the uncomfortable conclusion that Generative AI may be more toxic than good, and that its impact on mental health, humanity, culture and knowledge might be a net loss of stupendous harm. Even the most ludicrous tech fantasies, should not steal the life work of our beloved artists - simply to be reproduced for American profit. I hate this!
Meanwhile Sam Altman and his PR team thinks it’s funny:
How do I sleep in a world when something as corrupt as ChatGPT will make over $10 Billion in sales on stunts like this3? I’m horrified. There’s something deeply immoral and wrong with Silicon Valley. Do we want to live in a meme-factory that steals all the world’s copyright or experience a tech for good4?
OpenAI is joking that their GPUs are melting:
Meanwhile it’s time to seriously think about what using ChatGPT means. We are feeding a machine.
“Miyazaki’s discomfort with AI-generated art underscores a larger trend: AI doesn’t just replicate tasks - it reshapes how meaning (and thus value) is made.” - Kyla Scanlon
As the copyright argument heats up, we have to admit it’s possible this OpenAI company will lead to way more nefarious trends. Robbing us of our humanity won’t be enough. They won’t stop there.
OpenAI is creating a Generation of AI yes Men
According to the research of Anders Humlum, 41% of workers use ChatGPT for job-related tasks with younger and less experienced workers were more likely to use ChatGPT, with each additional year of age associated with a 0.7 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of using the tool.
The idea that OpenAI’s models can reason or are leading to AGI is fairly fantastical. Theft, cheating, taking multiple jobs with ChatGPT in the background is the new normal with OpenAI’s mass adoption. Microsoft funding OpenAI is leading to the purest definition of dystopia I’m aware of.
This is worse than I thought for society, culture, education and humanity.
This is not the internet I ever wanted to participate in.
ChatGPT sales “blow up” on crimes against Culture, Art and Miyazaki
OpenAI catering off a commoditized version of Miyazaki’s life work for its users, to gain new paid users for cheap thrills is revolting to me. If you feel the same way, share or comment on this piece:
See the video here as well:
OpenAI's endless copyright infringement continues: https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/openai_copyright_bypass/
I'm not entirely disagreeing, but a couple of thoughts have been taken a bit out of context.
- For "Studio Ghibli" style using 4o, even a simple prompt like 'make this anime style' was working in the same fashion. Plenty of other studios have copied the Ghibli style to a point where it has become generically anime.
- The instance where Miyazaki mentioned that AI was an 'insult to life itself' and that he would never use the tech in practice comes from a brief tech demo where he was shown a nightmarish 3d AI model demo for a zombie nearly a decade ago. Not surprisingly, he hated it. A lot has changed in a decade. I'm sure people will be quoting it a decade from now once we have even better image diffusion.
I DO agree that it reshapes meaning. If everyone has as Ghiblified profile picture, it really does take the charm away. Something that would normally have taken a talented artist a week to churn out for you takes a minute. This still calls into question how we're going to handle copyright law in the future. But generic art styles cannot be copyrighted.
I still want to see artists fairly compensated and live in a world where art is cherished. At the same time, this tech will continue to march forward. If it wasn't OpenAI, it would have been DeepSeek.