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Creatives have questioned whether this is ethical, as artists such as studio founder Hayao Miyazaki are still alive.
Legal experts suggest the style itself isnt protected, but its usage might be.
But these imitation animations arent the work of famed Japanese company Studio Ghibli: theyre fromChatGPT.
And that has some copyright experts sounding the alarm.
Just a few days ago,OpenAIreleased the latest version of GPT-4o, the generative AI model which underpinsChatGPT.
The most common kind of recreation?
Renders that bore an uncanny resemblance to the dreamy, hand-drawn aesthetic of Studio Ghiblis work.
Users have given the Ghibli treatment to everything from popular memes to political figures.
Does the Ghibli craze breach copyright?
And is it ethical to imitate a living artist?
Weve asked expert lawyers and broken down all of the issues this short explainer.
The debate: users flood social media with AI-generated Ghibli memes
Fan art is nothing new.
For as long as there have been animations, fans have created replica artwork.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.
OpenAIs latest GPT-4o update changes that.
Now, anyone can generate or transform an image into a Ghibli-style scene.
What would previously have taken hours can now be achieved in a matter of seconds.
On the other, it arguably reduces the value and originality of the source material.
Images circulating on social media faithfully replicate the Ghibli look, without a single human artist being involved.
Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki is known for his painstaking frame-by-frame approach to animation.
The studio famously spent more than a year animating a four-second scene inThe Wind Rises.
In a 2016 documentary, Miyazaki described AI-generated animation as an insult to life itself.
Then there are the legal questions.
Many of the visuals seen on social media effectively ape the Ghibli look.
Because its capable of such faithful mimicry, some have questioned whether they infringe on the studios copyright.
Unless ChatGPT were to replicate a specific character or scene, it might be hard to prove infringement.
Theres the matter of training data, too.
OpenAI hasnt disclosed specifically what image assets were used to train the latest version of its GPT-4o model.
It only specifies that a vast variety of image styles featured in the training data.
But here’s the verdict today from expert copyright lawyers on where this could all be headed.
Copyright law in the US does not protect ideas or styles, Mammen explains.
One artist creating a work ‘in the style of’ some other artist has been happening for centuries.
These issues are really testing the boundaries of copyright and other intellectual property laws, Mammen says.
Not because it’s copyright infringement, but because people don’t like that.
Individuals get very understandably viscerally upset by that," he said.
Studios, though, are a different matter.
We’re always learning from real-world use and feedback, and well keep refining our policies as we go.
As Mammen concludes, Advocates on both sides of the issue are arguing for legal reform.
