"Can't Stand Being Treated Cheaply Anymore"... Japanese Director Erupts in Anger Over Popularity of 'Ghibli Profile Pictures'

Japanese 'One Piece' Director: "Ghibli Is Being Treated Cheaply"
"Brand Value Damaged... Why Is This Allowed?"
American Director: "Democratization of Art? That's Self-Deception"

Recently, a global trend has emerged using OpenAI's generative artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT to transform photos into 'Ghibli animation style,' prompting famous animation directors to express their anger. Megumi Ishitani, the director of the Japanese animation 'One Piece,' stated on her social media on the 1st, "Defiling the name of Ghibli is absolutely unforgivable," adding, "I want to take legal action. I can no longer stand to see Ghibli animation treated so cheaply."

The main character Luffy of the Japanese animation 'One Piece'. X

The next day, Ishitani posted again on social media, asking, "Are there Japanese people using Ghibli AI? It's despairing. This is an act that can damage the value of the Ghibli brand," and questioned, "There is no way Ghibli officially permitted this, right? Why is unauthorized use of images like this allowed?"

Henry Selu, an American animation director who worked on One Piece, Naruto, and Pok?mon, also posted on social media on the 28th of last month, saying, "I don't know what exactly people creating AI Ghibli images think they are achieving other than making artists uncomfortable and angry," and criticized, "This cannot produce profitable films and is similar to trolling (provoking others to gain attention unpleasantly)."

Selu emphasized, "Anyone who calls this the democratization of art is deceiving themselves and lying," adding, "Becoming a great artist or director, or an Olympic athlete, cannot be democratized. Lifelong effort is something that will never change."

Sam Altman: "GPUs are melting"... 1 million users increase in 5 days

OpenAI released a new image generation AI model, 'ChatGPT-4o Image Generation,' on the 25th of last month. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attracted attention by uploading his profile picture on X (formerly Twitter) in the Ghibli style. This model is an image generation model combined with OpenAI's multimodal AI model 'ChatGPT-4o,' which generates images by understanding the user's intent without the need to input commands one by one.

AI image posted by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, on his X. X

In particular, as changing profile pictures to Ghibli style AI images has become a worldwide trend, the impact has been so strong that the number of users increased by 1 million in five days. In response, CEO Altman remarked, "The graphics processing units (GPUs) are melting."

However, issues regarding the protection of creators' rights and copyright have been raised. The Japanese government stated in a report titled 'Considerations on AI and Copyright' in March last year that "generated works that only have similar ideas such as style or painting technique, without direct similarity to existing works, do not constitute copyright infringement." However, this statement has been interpreted as meaning that imitating the drawing style of Studio Ghibli and director Hayao Miyazaki through ChatGPT is not copyright infringement, causing controversy within Japan.

OpenAI's significant relaxation of regulations on image generation has also become a topic of discussion. According to the new policy, it is possible to generate images of famous people such as former U.S. President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk through ChatGPT. Additionally, generating images containing discriminatory elements such as 'Asian eyes' or 'overweight people' has become possible, and restrictions on generating hateful symbols like the Nazi emblem 'Hakenkreuz' have been lifted.