The latest version of OpenAI‘s image generation technology has resulted in a flood of users sharing images on social media that have been transformed in the style of Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese animation studio.
On Tuesday, OpenAI launched what it called its “most advanced image generator yet,” built into GPT‑4o. That features a “natively multimodal model capable of precise, accurate, photorealistic outputs.” As it turns out, the image generator also is very good at replicating the anime style of Studio Ghibli, the company behind such popular films as “Spirited Away,” “My Neighbor Totoro” and “The Boy and the Heron.”
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, chimed in on the viral trend in a post on X Wednesday — indicating he has himself been Studio Ghibli-ed. Altman wrote, “> be me / > grind for a decade trying to help make superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever / > mostly no one cares for first 7.5 years, then for 2.5 years everyone hates you for everything / > wake up one day to hundreds of messages: ‘look i made you into a twink ghibli style haha.’”
Altman also changed his profile picture on X to a Ghibli-style image:
Reps for Studio Ghibli in North America declined to comment.
However, Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, has previously expressed strong disapproval of AI-generated animation. In a 2016 meeting where he was shown an AI animation demo, Miyazaki said, “I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.” He also said, “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
More recently, Hollywood actors and other creatives have voiced concerns about efforts by OpenAI and other artificial-intelligence companies to “weaken or eliminate” protections on copyrighted works for training AI systems. In comments filed with the Trump administration‘s Office of Science and Technology Policy earlier this month, more than 400 filmmakers, actors, musicians and others objected to what they said was lobbying by OpenAI and Google “for a special government exemption so they can freely exploit America’s creative and knowledge industries.”
On social media, users have shared multiple examples of Ghibli-style images produced by OpenAI’s new image generator:
