There’s a peculiar kind of magic in watching Studio Ghibli films. The kind that doesn’t just entertain — it lingers. It coats your soul like the afternoon light in My Neighbor Totoro, or the silent resilience of Princess Mononoke. It makes you want to touch grass, sip tea slowly, notice the wind, and wonder why we ever stopped paying attention to these things in the first place.

So it makes sense why people are yearning to romanticize life through a Ghibli lens. When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared the new AI-generated Ghibli-style image model, it took just hours, not days, for it to go viral. Suddenly, my feed was flooded: wedding photos reimagined in soft Ghibli pastels, childhood pictures transformed into whimsical dreamscapes, even pets rendered as characters from a world that never existed, but felt deeply familiar.

When I first saw it, I felt a tangle of emotions: wonder, nostalgia, unease - maybe all at once.

A bit of context may explain my reactions: Despite the surge of unsettling AI headlines — deepfakes rewriting truths, algorithms quietly training on unconsenting data — I’ve tried to stay grounded in the idea that AI, if shaped with intention, can be a force for good and it’s doing some really cool things already. I try to stay informed, not reactive. A power user, not just a passive observer. I keep up with models, fine-tuning, and prompt engineering—tracking how GPT-4 is outperforming humans on standardized evaluations like MMLU, tackling complex reasoning tasks in BIG-bench, and consistently ranking high on commonsense-heavy tests like HellaSwag and ARC. These aren’t fringe metrics; they’re the gold standard in the field.

So yes, it fascinates me how far we’ve come. And I’ll admit: part of me wanted to be impressed by how far AI-generated art had come, too.

And at first, it was kind of wonderful. People were genuinely delighted. Seeing themselves and their loved ones in a Ghibli world made them feel seen, softened. A friend’s wedding became a watercolor fairytale. A little nephew I adore, rosy-cheeked and giggling, rendered in a Ghibli landscape, looked like pure joy.

What struck me, too, as a marketing professional was this: it wasn’t even an official campaign—yet it became, arguably, one of the most successful organic marketing waves Studio Ghibli never planned for. The internet didn’t just love it. It claimed it. Everyone wanted to be the protagonist of a gentle, hopeful story. Even people who’d never seen a single Ghibli movie found themselves longing for its warmth, its stillness, its sense of wonder.

And yet, I couldn’t and still cannot shake the discomfort. There’s something about it that unsettles and feels… off.

A Master’s Touch, Replaced by a Prompt?

The first thought causing discomfort begins with the simple question: Would Studio Ghibli have consented to this? Well, as most of us are aware by now, Studio Ghibli hasn’t publicly clarified whether it gave permission for its style to be used this way — leaving the question of consent and creative rights murky at best.

Beyond the obvious question of the creators’ consent, honestly, as a Studio Ghibli enthusiast and fan, perhaps the very initial discomfort I felt wasn’t just about aesthetics or authorship—but about essence. The very essence Ghibli has spent decades quietly teaching us to notice. Through story after story, and through the slow, deliberate process of its creation, Studio Ghibli has always asked something rare of its audience: to pay attention. Not just to what happens, but to how it feels.

Those familiar with Hayao Miyazaki’s work—the visionary behind Studio Ghibli—know his relationship with animation and storytelling is nothing short of sacred. Every frame is a meditation. A philosophy. A quiet rebellion against speed and spectacle. And it’s not just Miyazaki’s practice; that philosophy seems to echo in every Ghibli animator’s work. 

A famous example from Miyazaki and his team’s work explains this perfectly: this four-second crowd scene from the Wind Rises that took over 1 year to animate.

Ghibli market scene still

Notice how within these four seconds, entire lives unfold: A couple momentarily torn apart, trying to find each other again. A mother reaching for her child’s hand, separated by the current of bodies. Friends weaving through the chaos. An unruly horse. Tiny human moments—love, burden, longing—threaded into a swirl of motion. Each one coherent. Each one intentional. Little stories, happening all at once. 

Taking one year to create it wasn’t inefficiency — it was reverence. Reverence for the craft, the story, the lived emotion behind every line and brushstroke.

You see, Miyazaki’s worlds are not just beautiful because they’re well-animated. His worlds are beautiful because they understand what it means to be human. Miyazaki’s worlds depict joy, slowness, fatigue, wonder, grief, and loss in ways that only someone who’s felt or observed those things can portray.

Now, AI scrapes those aesthetics. Repackages them. Mimics them. And it’s being fed into our screens at lightning speed. You cannot ignore how the creators of art feel about their art being replicated. Miyazaki himself once described AI-generated art as “an insult to life itself.”

That sentiment, while dramatic, resonates more the deeper you think from a creator’s point of view.

What Does it Mean to Make Art in 2025?

So what is the creator’s point of view?

In May 2024, I attended a roundtable, “AI, Art, and Copyright,” moderated by the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington, where where Kelly McKernan— a watercolor and gouache artist—spoke about their journey and their growing role in advocating for artists’ rights. Their work is vibrant, personal, and steeped in emotion — and now, unwittingly, part of an ongoing class action lawsuit against some AI companies accused of scraping thousands of artworks (including theirs) without consent.

Hearing Kelly speak changed something in me. I had always supported creators’ rights, but mostly in the abstract—hashtags, headlines, broad declarations about consent and ethics. But that day, it wasn’t abstract. It was real. There was a face, a voice, a struggle. A life behind the art.

Kelly didn’t just speak about the violation of not being asked or compensated fairly for their work. They spoke about what it took to create that work in the first place—the slow accumulation of memories, the joyful and messy bits of an entire life that shaped their creative voice. Years of becoming. Years of vulnerability. And now, in seconds, it could all be replicated by a machine that had never lived a single moment of it.

That’s the part AI can’t touch. Not just the technique. Not the brushwork or the color palette. But the humanity. It’s the same reason Ghibli hits differently. In Spirited Away, it isn’t grand speeches or that makes us resonate with Chihiro’s coming-of-age or No Face’s loneliness. It’s in subtle glances, awkward stumbles, moments of pause. No Face doesn’t speak of his pain; he embodies it, lingering in doorways, offering gold, consuming everything in a desperate attempt to be seen. His loneliness isn’t explained. It’s felt. 

Perhaps, AI can simulate No Face and Chihiro’s color palette, the pacing, the visual motifs. But that is not what makes them immortal characters to Ghibli watchers; it is their journeys. AI cannot connect by observing the human experience. It has not lived. It does not ache.

So why are we drawn to it anyway?

Perhaps, because it’s easy. Because it’s arguably accessible. And because AI image generation models have finally reached here (and it’s only going to keep getting better). Also, because it’s fun to see yourself as a Ghibli character, especially when the real world feels harsh and noisy. In a way, these filters and fan arts are a kind of escapism—like cosplay for the soul.

But it does raise a larger question: What will we consider art in the future? If something can be replicated instantly, is it still sacred? If the process no longer requires struggle, joy, revision, living—does it carry the same meaning?

Perhaps AI art will always lack something ineffable. That doesn’t mean we should reject it outright; that is impractical, let’s be honest. But maybe we should tread with more reverence. Especially when borrowing from the very artists who spent lifetimes teaching us how to be still, how to feel, how to be human.

Despite everything, Studio Ghibli is now part of the global digital zeitgeist. Even without comment, they’re trending, everywhere. It’s an incredible feat of soft power and accidental branding. The dream of a Ghibli life is now internet-native, memeified, universal.

And so, it is not unnatural for Ghibli fans to be uncomfortable this past week. There is an undeniable poetic irony in seeing Studio Ghibli AI art trending. After all, this is an art born from patience and hand-drawn humanity, now trending thanks to the very industrialization its creators once resisted.

But maybe this discomfort isn’t just a glitch in the system—it’s a feature of our awareness. It means something in us still recognizes the difference between craft and copy, between lived emotion and automated reproduction. It’s a reminder that convenience isn’t the same as connection. And this sort of signals a cultural shift in our understanding, that is due with the advent of AI.

We can’t prompt our way out of this

The recent pushback by creators, from grassroots campaigns to landmark lawsuits by artists like Kelly McKernan, also speaks to that cultural turning point: a demand for respect, consent, and true digital ownership in an age of endless remixing. Think about it: this cultural intervention is organic and necessary. It only asks that we stop treating art as infinitely remixable, and start treating creators as stakeholders in the systems profiting from their labor, their memories, their voice.

To be clear: AI is not the enemy. But apathy is. And unchecked acceleration always comes at a cost — a pattern we’ve seen too many times before. Social media, for all its power to connect, amplify voices and build community, also grew with little oversight until we were forced to confront its effects on attention spans, public discourse, and the mental health of an entire generation.

Now, AI is racing down a similar path. Its carbon footprint is expanding rapidly, powered by massive server farms and compute-heavy models that require enormous energy. Training a single large language model can emit as much carbon as five cars over their entire lifetimes. And yet, our climate infrastructure hasn’t caught up — not in regulation, not in energy sourcing, and arguably, definitely not in global coordination.

Still, we must be honest: AI is inevitable. It is already reshaping industries and accelerating workflows, and that’s not inherently a bad thing; it just means we have to navigate a new shift. It’s also doing some undeniably good things like helping make spaces more accessible to a degree that was impossible previously. For example, I recently learnt about Tarjimly, a nonprofit using AI for real-time language translation that helps refugees communicate. There are millions of similar use cases where AI is unarguably good and necessary.

The point is: we should not resist progress, but try to meet it with intention. Avoiding a dystopian future won’t come from slowing down AI — it will come from building systems where ethics lead, not lag.

So, to that point, this definitely isn’t a call to ban AI-generated art. That ship has sailed and it’s impractical to want to bring it back. But it is a call to pause—to ask better questions. To hold space for complexity. To build tech ecosystems where ethical foresight is not an afterthought, but the blueprint. 

I obviously do not claim to have answers to how we can get there but I understand that the real work lies in understanding the space deeply, approaching it with curiosity rather than panic, and creating multidisciplinary, inclusive spaces where ethicists, artists, scientists, engineers, and historically excluded voices shape the direction it takes.

Until then, we, as digital consumers, users, scrollers, sharers, should keep feeling the discomfort. And more importantly, we should name it.

The paradox: Will commodifying art only make it more missed?

Specifically – when it comes to art, we’re not just experiencing a groundbreaking technological shift — we’re living through an extremely important cultural one. And nowhere is that more visible than in the way AI enables us to reproduce aesthetics at scale, to summon style with a few words. The tools are dazzling. But so is the speed at which they’re flattening the process into product.

We can’t reasonably expect society to critically engage with what it percieves as a commodity; that’s never been the norm. So the idea that consumers will approach AI-generated art with deeper scrutiny is, frankly, wishful thinking. And in an era of frictionless creation and infinite scroll, it feels more unlikely than ever.

But here’s the interesting paradox worth reflecting on – maybe commodification doesn’t automatically mean devaluation, at least when it comes to art. Maybe, in a strange way, the mass reproduction of beauty has made it easier, not harder, to recognize what can’t be faked.

Because even as AI floods our feeds and mimics creativity with uncanny fluency, something essential still holds. The art that lingers and truly moves us, carries a tension, a trace, a humanness, a lived-in intentionality – that machines can’t replicate. And somewhere, deep down, we know the difference.

That’s what unsettles me. And maybe, in a naive way, that’s also what reassures me, and makes me hopeful about humanity feeling enough for art to not be devalued.

Because for all its exciting progress, maybe AI will always fall short of that final frame: the breath before a character speaks, the pause that tells a story without words. That’s why only Miyazaki can make us feel what Ghibli movies do and AI can only lean into that nostalgia as a commodity.

That’s not something you can prompt. The pause before the line still belongs to us. Maybe, that’s what makes art… art.

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