All posts tagged: Ghibli

ChatGPT Ghibli Trend Weaponizes ‘Harmlessness’ to Manufacture Consent

ChatGPT Ghibli Trend Weaponizes ‘Harmlessness’ to Manufacture Consent

Published by skeptic

In late March, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that the company’s flagship AI platform, ChatGPT, could produce high-quality images under its new version GPT-4o. Within hours, a Seattle software engineer used the new capabilities to transform a family photo into the style of Studio Ghibli films like Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. The trend quickly went viral, with Altman and other OpenAI staffers posting Ghiblified images. As users overloaded OpenAI servers conjuring up these images, the platform gained a million new users within an hour, eventually pushing the platform past 150 million users. By March 27, the White House, the Israel Defense Forces, and India’s civic engagement platform had all jumped on the trend to post Ghiblified propaganda on X. But all users posting Ghibli images—whether they realized it or not—were participating in propaganda. Related Articles While the term propaganda tends to conjure images of George Orwell’s 1984 or the graphic posters of Hitler’s Third Reich, propaganda in the 21st century operates differently. As political scientist Dmitry Chernobrov wrote recently, in the …

Lawyer Says Studio Ghibli Could Take Legal Action Against OpenAI

Lawyer Says Studio Ghibli Could Take Legal Action Against OpenAI

Published by José

OpenAI’s extremely popular AI chatbot tool ChatGPT caught a huge wave this week when untold numbers of users started using it to generate images evoking the style of animation legend Hayao Miyazaki’s work at Studio Ghibli. The trend quickly took on a life of its own. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took to X-formerly-Twitter to joke about being turned into a “twink ghibli style.” OpenAI has since started cracking down on the trend, implementing a confusing range of changes that now often refuse requests to generate images in Ghibli’s style. The viral trend, and OpenAI’s chaotic response, reignited a heated debate surrounding copyright and the use of generative AI directly undermining the work of human artists and publishers — including the extremely talented animators at Ghibli. And according to former general counsel at the TV channel Showtime and AI expert Rob Rosenberg, Ghibli may actually be able to take legal action against OpenAI over the situation. While it’s a “complex question” whether the Japanese animation studio would have enough grounds, the company “might have the …

Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘disgusted’ thoughts on AI resurface following Studio Ghibli trend

Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘disgusted’ thoughts on AI resurface following Studio Ghibli trend

Published by skeptic

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter If you’ve been on social media in the past few days, there is a strong chance that you’ve seen AI-generated images imitating the iconic style of Studio Ghibli – the Japanese animation company responsible for classic films like Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle. Thanks to a new version of ChatGPT, users can transform popular internet memes or personal photos into the distinct style of Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki, a renowned critic of AI who has strongly condemned the technology in the past. However, the trend also highlighted ethical concerns about artificial intelligence tools trained on copyrighted creative works and what that means for the future livelihoods of human artists, as well as ethical questions on the value of human creativity in a time increasingly shaped by algorithms. Miyazaki, 84, known for his hand-drawn approach and whimsical storytelling, has criticised AI’s role in …

Spirited Away review, London Coliseum: Studio Ghibli adaptation is three hours of relentless spectacle

Spirited Away review, London Coliseum: Studio Ghibli adaptation is three hours of relentless spectacle

Published by Sam

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Spirited Away simply shouldn’t work. At a time when hackneyed screen-to-stage cash-ins have become a ravaging blight on London’s theatre scene, along comes this: a doggedly faithful adaptation of one of the greatest and most adored animated films of all time. Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning 2001 fantasy is inimitable – a medium-defining and wholly idiosyncratic achievement only possible in the boundaryless canvas of animation. And yet, here it is on stage, reconfigured ambitiously into flesh and puppetry. London Coliseum plays host to the first international production of a stage show that has run in Japan since 2022, devised by the production company Toho and adapted by John Caird. Following in the slipstream of My Neighbour Totoro, another consummate Studio Ghibli theatre adaptation brought to the British stage, Spirited Away is performed entirely in Japanese (with English subtitles), and features the majority of the roundly superb original cast. Mone Kamishiraishi …

Studio Ghibli Lets You Download Free Images from Hayao Miyazaki’s “Final” Film, The Boy and the Heron

Studio Ghibli Lets You Download Free Images from Hayao Miyazaki’s “Final” Film, The Boy and the Heron

Published by José

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li fans are still pon­der­ing the mean­ing of Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s The Boy and the Heron, which came out last year. Though by some mea­sure the stu­dio’s most lav­ish fea­ture yet — not least by the mea­sure of it being the most expen­sive film yet pro­duced in Japan — it’s also the one least amenable to sim­ple inter­pre­ta­tion. Even more so than in his pre­vi­ous work, Miyaza­ki seems to have intend­ed to make a movie less to be explained than to be expe­ri­enced. Just as the tit­u­lar young pro­tag­o­nist descends into a bizarre but cap­ti­vat­ing under­world and returns, changed, to real­i­ty, so does the view­er. If you’ve seen The Boy and the Heron, hear­ing its very title (which in Japan is 君たちはどう生きるか, or How Do You Live?) will bring back to mind a host of vivid images: the rov­ing back of bul­bous-fea­tured grannies obsessed with non-per­ish­able food­stuffs; the pos­tur­ing of the mid­dle-age Bird­man, stuffed into his avian flight suit; the pyrotech­nic feats of the young Lady Himi; and above all, per­haps, the float­ing cas­cades of …

Behind The Boy and the Heron: The myths and magic of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki

Behind The Boy and the Heron: The myths and magic of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki

Published by skeptic

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free How does a film that shunned all advertising break records in Japan, end up No 1 at the US box office, and become a serious awards contender? Because it’s a Hayao Miyazaki film. If you don’t know the name, make no mistake – this is a big deal. Miyazaki is the talismanic co-founder of Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli, and his latest film, The Boy and the Heron, is finally out in the UK. Up until the day of the film’s premiere, no one had seen a frame of it. In other hands, this marketing strategy would be tantamount to commercial suicide. For Miyazaki, the mere fact of his involvement was advertising enough. Few artists have ever loomed quite so large over an art form as Miyazaki in the world of animation. His films – lyrical, soulful, endlessly imaginative fantasies – have been pivotal in bringing anime to audiences around …