Netizens, including world leaders, have been embracing the viral trend of Ghibli Art on social networking sites like Instagram and X since ChatGPT — a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot — introduced the function in its services.

Popular memes, selfies, movie sequences, and even everyday objects are being transformed into this classic anime art form by netizens, who are saturating social media with this unique art. 

But have you ever pondered about the history of Ghibli anime art and how OpenAI began using this feature?

Ghibli’s origin

The distinctive aesthetic of Studio Ghibli — a well-known Japanese animation studio co-founded in 1985 by Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki — introduced their unique anime style popularised among fans as Ghibli art. 

In the animation industry, Studio Ghibli is one of the most acclaimed and popular studios with their extensive collection consisting award-winning short films, television ads, and two critically and commercially acclaimed feature films.

Their feature films have also won the prestigious Oscar award twice for their movies Spirited Away in 2003 and The Boy and the Heron in 2024.

Current fever

When OpenAI revealed its integrated image-generating capability, it caused a stir on social media. OpenAI’s latest tool, which was first introduced on Tuesday as part of GPT-4o, has stunned users with its ability to mimic the recognisable Ghibli style.

Netizens are using Ghibli-style images in anything from famous movie scenes to intimate moments, marriage proposals, and even terrible incidents.

“At OpenAI, we have long believed image generation should be a primary capability of our language models. That’s why we’ve built our most advanced image generator yet into GPT‑4o. The result is image generation that is not only beautiful but also useful,” the platform said in a statement.

Other AI models like Grok-3, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Google’s Gemini are not far behind ChatGPT, which is the industry leader in Ghibli art production. ChatGPT leads even if other AI models provide comparable picture generators.

However, several fans of Studio Ghibli and its co-founder Miyazaki as well as those who regard the profession of animation have raised concerns regarding the ethics and morality of users attempting to create art through AI.

They have raised a pertinent question highlighting how OpenAI’s attempt at introducing the trend as well as its users jumping on the bandwagon have completely disregarded the decades-long hard work of Studio Ghibli.

They have pointed at how the trend and its consumption shows a lack of of respect towards the studio’s artists, many of whom have spent months and even years creating the most detailed art for their shorts and feature-length films.