As the Internet saturates with compilations of AI artworks imitating Hayao Miyazaki’s unique aesthetics created by his iconic studio, illustrators, animators and a legal counsel weigh in the implications of this phenomenon
A Star Wars scene in Miyazaki’s style. Pic Courtesy/Mufaddal Durbar on X
On March 29, days after putting out the ‘Ghibli’ version of the latest image rendering phenomenon by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, CEO Sam Altman took to X to ask users to slow down. “Can y’all please chill on generating images? This is insane, our team needs sleep,” he wrote. It was a sign of the feverish intensity with which the internet exploded with images rendered in the style of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.
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New revolution
Founded in 1985, Studio Ghibli continues to espouse hand-drawn animation films in the world of 3D and AI designs. The founding members — Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki, Isao Takahata and Yasuyoshi Takuma — evolved the style through much loved films such as Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro.
Sam Altman as a Ghibli character. Pic Courtesy/Sam Altman
Such was the phenomenon that few could escape it. From the White House to Sachin Tendulkar and Shashi Tharoor, everyone wanted their own slice of the Ghibli nostalgia. Veteran filmmaker and animator Suresh Eriyat understands why. “It is fantastic and aspirational. It is how people would like to see themselves,” shares the filmmaker, a fan who met the legendary Japanese artist during his recent trip to Japan.
The phenomenon of AI is also not new to illustrators. However, as illustrator Prasad Bhat explains, “I don’t mind if anyone uses AI as a tool in the creation process. It is lovely. But if I use someone else’s IP to create something, I am bound to get a legal notice.”
Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali gets an anime revamp. Pic Courtesy/SaffronBengali on X
Art is not aesthetics
Bhat points out that firstly people ought to stop calling these AI-generated images ‘art’. “Rendering an image is not art. Art is a process. Here, it is reduced to the outcome,” he says. Comic creator and founder, Kini Studios, Abhijeet Kini calls it an age-old battle. “From the camera to digital tools, technology and art have had conflicts. I use several tools myself. The difference is that with AI, images are generated without any cerebral effort. If everyone can create Ghibli, or have Ghibli, it loses its rarity and value.”
Suresh Eriyat, Abhijeet Kini, Aaryama Somayaji and Prasad Bhat
Another illustrator, Aaryama Somayaji, questioned the ethics of the task. “Praising technological innovation and apathetic overuse of an art house’s decades-in-the-making iconic style of working are mutually exclusive. The images that flooded the Internet were made without the consent of Studio Ghibli, its rightful owners and creators. That is where the issue lies,” she wrote to us.
Who owns the art?
The debate about copyright with AI generated images is that it eschews all thought. Bhat adds that with technology evolving at a faster pace than expected, the industry is caught by surprise.
Jamshed Mistry
Eriyat notes, “Animators are already being offloaded by the hundreds. Technicolor recently let go of 3,000 staff. I have heard conversations of agencies asking animators why they should wait for weeks, when they could get an AI to create in days. People might not understand the consequences of this, but the technology creators do. When they choose to use an artist’s lifelong work, questions have to be asked.”
Jamshed Mistry, counsel, Bombay High Court, offers a voice of calm. “The Copyright Act in India, as it stands, offers the artist the rights as the first author. If Ghibli Studios were in India, they would be well within their rights to send a legal notice,” he explains. Does the absence of a monetising prospect with the tool affect any case, we wonder? “No,” Mistry explains, “ChatGPT may not be a monetising tool.
Sachin Tendulkar joins the trend with a recreation of a moment from the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup. Pic Courtesy/SachinTendulkar on X
However, as a platform, it does bring them fame and enables their funding indirectly. On the second level, they do not have control of how the person who obtains the tool’s services might use it.” Then again, he adds, the case law in India is yet to develop on the AI front. “The difficulty is that technology is evolving faster than the legal solutions.”
Hayao Miyazaki. Pic Courtesy/Wikimedia Commons
Technology versus art
While Eriyat admits this is an inevitable point of conflict, the offense is more ethical. He explains, “Ghibli is an artistic style that slowly evolved over decades and decades of work on details. To have it shortchanged like this felt like a cruel irony, knowing Miyazaki san’s opinion of AI.”
Kini explains, “Humans understand and value the time and effort put into an artist’s work. Art is valued because it is a laborious process. If in the near future, AI evolves to create its own artworks, it would still not be art. Copies of Mona Lisa are not Mona Lisa.”
Shashi Tharoor in a Ghibli avatar. Pic Courtesy/Shashi Tharoor on X
In Miyazaki’s words
In 2016, when Hayao Miyazaki was shown a display of an experimental AI module, the animator had recalled the struggle of his differently-abled friend to even lift a hand. “Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel it is an insult to life itself,” he told the bemused creators.
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