The internet loves photo trends, especially when it converts personal pictures into dreamy pictures by adding visually stunning effects. The latest trend which has taken social media by storm is the ‘Ghiblification’ or ‘Ghibli transformation’, where AI converts real-life images into animated pictures that resemble the style by Ghibli Studios from Japan.
The Glibli AI trend trend started when tech wiz Grant Slatton shared a Ghiblified image of himself, his wife and his dog, on March 26, using OpenAI’s image generation feature in ChatGPT which has multiple style formats. On April 1, OpenAI released this feature for free to all users. Slatton’s post later exploded, sparking the new Ghibli trend.
The internet was soon flooded with Ghiblified images of users. People love the soft, romanticised images that this animation style creates. But the irony? Few even knew what ‘Ghibli’ was.
WHAT IS GHIBLI ART?
Despite the Ghibli AI trend making people gush over its lively creation and vibrant style, most think of it only as some cartoon style. But it is so much more.
The Ghibli animation style is copied from Ghibli Studio, a widely recognised Japanese studio renowned for their legendary animation, which is filled with deep emotion, in-depth storytelling and painstakingly hand-drawn frames.
Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985 by three renowned directors, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki, who built this legacy of a slow, immersive world where each brushstroke serves a purpose.
THE ESSENCE AND LEGACY OF GHIBLI ARTISTRY
The Ghibli aesthetic isn’t just about the bright colours and whimsical settings, but it is about the imperfection and emotion of the hand-drawn anime and how Miyakazi put life into the extraordinary characters.
Ghibli Studio is known for creating authentic and emotionally rich movies that transport the audience to different worlds, but most importantly, also transport them to the deepest essence of what it means to be human.
Films like Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro, Princess Mononoke, The Boy and the Heron, The Wind Rises and The Grave of Fireflies are a few of the most famous, visually stunning and must-watch animated films by Ghibli studio. However, if you are an emotional person, keep the tissues ready as they are magical and highly touching.
Princess Mononoke was the first animated movie to win picture of the year in the Japan Academy Prize. Spirited Away was the first Studio Ghibli creation to earn an Academy Award for the Best Animated Feature in 2003.
In 2024, The Boy and the Heron also earned an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, marking a remarkable comeback for Hayao Miyazaki after a long hiatus.
CAN AI CAPTURE THE MAGIC OF GHIBLI WORLD?
The Ghibli AI trend can be taken as just another fun and harmless trend in the social media world. But to Ghibli fans who have an idea about the true essence of Ghibli art, this is pretty infuriating. Each and every frame of animation shown in Ghibli movies is hand-drawn by the creators.
When an AI generates art, it combines art, data and ideas from different original artworks and presents a machinery interpretation which lacks the human creativity and emotion that goes into real art.
To understand the depth of Ghibli art, here’s an example. There is a four-second scene in the Studio Ghibli movie The Wind Rises (2013) which took animator Eiji Yamamori one year and three months to hand-draw frame by frame. It had several stories within the four-second scene emphasising the different facets of human reaction.
Note how every character in this crowd scene has a certain personality, and a certain direction of movement and guess what? This scene has 24 frames per second. That’s a total of 96 images, resulting in 6.4 hand-drawn images per month.
Imagine the devotion the creator put into it by sketching and resketching the same art to make it perfect. Now art in the same style is being generated in a few seconds by an AI tool.
The Ghibliification of real-life images is exciting, but it can also affect the artist and art, especially when the main artist behind Ghibli Studio has called out AI-generated content in the past.
In a clip from the Japanese documentary series NHK Special: Hayao Miyazaki – The One Who Never Ends (2016), when the creator was shown an AI animation demo, he was shown as stating, “I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.”
“I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself,” he further added.
While AI-generated art has already faced outrage over copyright issues since it essentially just copies styles from artists across the world, the new Ghibli AI trend inspires a different kind of rage and betrayal since Studio Ghibli creations are as human as they can get.
THE ONES WHO JOINED THE TREND, AND THE ONES WHO DIDN’T
The moment the Ghibli AI trend broke on the internet, everyone jumped on the bandwagon — from influencers and celebrities to politicians.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, superstar Amitabh Bachchan and many other celebs embraced the trend.
Such was the impact of the trend that even the Israeli military joined in by generating Ghibli-style images of its soldiers. This led to criticism from Ghibli fans.
What makes it quite alarming is that Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki has spent his whole life creating anti-war movies like The Grave of Fireflies and Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki also boycotted the Oscars in 2003 over the US Invasion of Iraq.
However, there are still many people who decided to stay away from the Ghibli AI trend. This is because, for Ghibli fans, their films are more than just an animation, and they believe this trend is an insult to the artist and real, human-created art.
Aruja Maithani, a 22-year-old undergrad student and a fan of Studio Ghibli, stated, “Art requires emotions, years of dedication and talent, which technology lacks. A finished work of art is merely an end product for the techies to go ahead and copy in a soulless rendering.”
“It’s not just about Miyazaki getting disrespected here, but it’s the disrespect of art in general. There are many who have been in dilemma for AI replacing art. But real art survives, and it will live through this as well,” she says.
“Nothing can replace the real human emotions that go behind creating masterpieces and it has soul which AI lacks,” she adds.
Another fan, Srishty Chauhan, a 23-year-old student, says, “See, the Ghibli art trend isn’t absurd because it exists… it’s absurd because people who don’t even recognise the real artist are pushing it.”
“The trend should be about the movies, the years of hard work Miyazaki poured into them, not some AI-generated filter made in seconds,” she adds.
However, some Ghibli fans also showed a liking and appreciation for this trend. Ayush, a 22-year-old student from Mumbai, says, “Actually, if I say, I don’t think it’s such a big deal, I know the actual art takes a lot more passion and time to create, but seeing this isn’t the only things that is being replicated by AI nowadays, there are numerous things.”
AI is already making art which is being sold, and it’s gaining popularity in the art world. In recent years, AI-generated pieces have even been featured in galleries. What makes it even more interesting is, this AI-generated art doesn’t necessarily need human intervention.
Be it Studio Ghibli or the Ghibli AI trend, both have the world in a chokehold. The anime lover can hardly move on from the Studio Ghibli masterpieces, and currently it does not look like the social media world is ready to bid farewell to this trend anytime soon.
–Article by Priyanka Palta
