This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s spring editorial intern Gahnique Bell. Find her on Instagram at @s14rbur81_g4l4xy. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
Spirited Away, Howls Moving Castle, Ponyo, Kiki’s Delivery Service.
All are beloved films created by the well-known Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghibli.
Its films are known for having a cozy, warm, and peaceful vibe filled with fantastical adventure that people from all over the world come to adore, but recently, there has been a bit of controversy going on surrounding the company.
AI has increasingly become an easy tool to handle completing easy tasks and commands, but people have taken it a bit too far that have raising many concerns among people. Studio Ghibli is one of them, especially after a popular trend of using Studio Ghibli AI has been floating around social media.
What’s The Deal With AI Anyway?
AI stands for artificial intelligence. If you don’t know anything about AI or haven’t heard of it, then you must be living under a rock. AI is a form of technology that is capable of performing tasks done by humans, such as writing essays, generating art, and in some cases, creating fake videos and pictures of someone.
Their whole concept of AI actually goes deeper than what most people think. In a McKinsey article it explains the different types of AI out there like machine learning which is used to perform “large sets of historical data, synthesized data, or human inputs”, deep learning which involves a deeper, complex, and more accurate results of data than machine learning, and finally the one everyone knows the most: generative AI which is a as you guessed it a piece of technology that generates content (think of Chat GTP or GEMINI).
There has been a looootttttt of drama surrounding the ethics of using AI. I’m not a huge fan of it myself, and as a creative, it hurts to see how it has become something that is actively hurting people’s livelihoods and even dreams of pursuing a creative career. Because of it supposed usefulness and how its accessible to everyday people, it has already made its way into jobs, especially creative jobs, and raising concerns on how it will affect work. AI art in particular, has been a big issue for artists and writers. Ai art is a really big thing that’s been floating around social media lately. Some of it has been used to steal other people’s art and others have used it as a quick way to become an “artist” by putting in a simple prompt instead of learning the actual skill of drawing.
Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Ghibli Studios, is strictly against the use of AI and have even came out to publicly declare his distaste for AI. “I feel like we are nearing to the end of times” Miyazaki says in a presentation of AI back in 2016, “We humans are losing faith in ourselves.”
Unfortunately, it seems like Miyazaki fear is coming true.
Studio Ghibli AI Art Takes Over Social Media
Lately, there’s been a trend on social media that involves using Open AI’s new image generator that turns images into the Studio Ghibli art style. Now this doesn’t seem to be as harmful, but it goes against Miyazaki’s wishes and his concerns for AI.
It is blatantly stealing someone else’s art to create something that is not essentially yours.
It reinforces to people that AI art is okay and harmless and pushes people to continue to use it despite how it hurts actual artists.
Imagine years of work that you put into creating art and developing an art style that’s distinctly recognized by millions of people, is suddenly dumbed down to someone who can just replicate it in a matter of seconds.
It’s not a great feeling. It’s like a backhand to the face.
Some artists voiced their anger and pointed out that the Ghibli AI could be caught up in potential copyright violations since the style and brand name is used without permission.
In order for an AI to generate images in a Ghibli studio style, it had to have been fed Ghibli art frames and images, which is plagiarism to some degree. It doesn’t exactly copy the style, but it mimics it so well that it’s sometimes almost impossible to see whether it’s the real Ghibli style or generative AI.
This is the case for many artists who have found their work online, either being sold or someone claiming it as their. It is an ongoing battle for artists to keep their work protected from people who want to take it.
This leads to a big problem that could potentially happen to many artists. If an AI can replicate an art style from any artist to stop them from creating a company or business out of it? There aren’t that many regulated always surrounding AI, so it could be an entirely possible that it could happen.
Actual businesses using generative AI don’t help the problem either when they know it’s fast and cheap and doesn’t require hiring an artist to make the art. They used ai for book covers, backgrounds, and movie covers, and other marketing tactics.
The Double-edged Sword of AI
While AI is currently causing havoc across social media, I do want to point out that AI does have its benefits.
It CAN be used as a tool for artists and other careers.
I have seen artists use AI as a way to help them fix in between when they’re animating, it can help artists generate ideas and prompts they can use as a challenge to themselves or a warmup, or simply fix a mistake they made in their digital art.
If people were more reluctant to use AI as a tool rather than using it to gain likes and money, I feel like AI wouldn’t be as big as a problem as it is now.
Artists are people who spend most of their lives perfecting their craft. They go to school. They teach themselves anatomy, perspective, coloring, color schemes, animating, and painting. There are so many skills and learning that go into being an artist. A lot of work, care, and love is poured into the art. That’s something AI can’t replicate.
As much as people want to defend ai and say that it has purpose, meaning, and the hard work that regular artists put into their work is there is no denying that AI art will never come close to the amount of work that goes into art made by creative humans
Are you for or against AI art? Why? What do you think about the Ghibli AI art controversy? Let us know in the comments!
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