The Studio Ghibli AI trend is a glaring issue that must be addressed, especially in a world of rapid consumerism and ever-growing and ever-dying trends, where what’s hot today may not be hot tomorrow. The concern lies not only for artists but for human beings and media consumers. Artists who spend years honing their craft in various mediums suddenly find their entire life’s work confronted by just a few prompts and an entity that can replicate it in seconds. So why should you care?
Simply because Art is the narrative through which History is most often represented. From the first cave paintings to the Hieroglyphs of Egypt, various art forms have shown us the richness and depth of civilizations across time. A very important medium of storytelling.
Studio Ghibli, which is the brainchild of Hayao Miyazaki, a creative mind like no other, an animator extraordinaire whose work often highlights the beauty and serenity of life through the real and the mystical. Miyazaki’s stories show the very human elements we experience in life. A very common ingredient in this experience is pain. And pain is something that’s ingrained not only in the Japanese ethos of art, but also in the way Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki work.
We all have fond memories of the Studio Ghibli movies, but often overlook the amount of time Miyazaki and his team dedicated to those wonderful scenes that we hold so dear to our hearts.
The tenacity and love for the craft that Studio Ghibli has known few bounds. Case in point being the 4-second scene that you see above, which took 1 year and 3 months to complete. Each frame is hand-drawn and hand-painted to masterfully depict a very human scenario that only humans who’ve experienced can depict. We’ve similar memories of the above scenario in our own lives.
The Ghibli way
A user on Reddit made a comment on the above scene, very aptly highlighting the effort by stating:
“All are hand-drawn and painted with water colour.“
“24 fps for 4 seconds is 96 images“
“6.4 images/month, 1/3 of an image in a single 8 hr work day“
“Eiji Yamamori was 46 in 2013, if he worked until retirement at 64, he could animate 57.6 seconds“
“If he started at 18 it would have been 147.2 seconds“
“Eiji Yamamori is one the most talented and hardworking animators that has worked for Hayao Miyazaki“
This observation puts into perspective the dedication these artists hold for their craft. A multi-billion dollar corporation coming in and sweeping on Miyazaki’s work and using it as a quick gag is insulting to many artists.
A user on Instagram shared an experience they had with their child, who put in hours to draw a picture. When confronted with the AI, which replicated a better result, the child was obviously heartbroken. In that moment, all the love and effort that the child put in were rendered obsolete. But in an outcome-based society, we often fail to notice that there is a human element in our daily work and our art, too. Our emotions, when synchronised with our human experience, synthesize something far more priceless than a cheap copy or a flawless artwork. They create a moment, a moment of pure ecstasy, where we bask in the sum total of all that we’ve been through in our lives until then.
That is one of the reasons that makes Studio Ghibli’s movies so amazing, when you get to know the people behind the craft. It’s the fact that this group of animators, who’ve spent years honing their craft, push themselves and channel their human emotions and experience into a medium that we enjoy.
Ghibli AI trend, Data, Intellectual Rights Concern- connecting the dots
Open AI has also received criticism on its use of the above trend to gather information from people, and many concerns have been raised on the basis of what comes under copyright infringement for AI. Just a year ago, there was talk around Meta using artists’ profiles to train their AI models, and many artists were quick to point out how this infringes on their work. This led to a lot of artists deleting their works from Meta platforms and shifting to a new platform called Cara.
Cara, which was founded by Zhang Jingna, an artist herself, wanted a place where artists could have a say over who used their artwork. Providing the artist’s rights over their intellectual property and controlling who uses it and for what. Meta and other software companies have come under fire for the rampant violation of intellectual properties being committed and how this is hurting not only the lives of ordinary people but artists as well. The growing concern for regulations to be put in place and what comes under fair use is picking up steam in all sectors of the art industry.
Videos of Miyazaki in 2016 criticizing AI have resurfaced amidst the trend, and a lot of artists took to social media to raise concern and awareness on the matter. Mr Miyazaki told FarOut Magazine,
“I can’t watch this stuff and find [it] interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. 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.”
He further said,
“I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
The director of the world-renowned anime One Piece, Megumi Ishitani, posted on Instagram, stating that Studio Ghibli should sue OpenAI for copying their style.
“There’s no way Ghibli would officially give permission, right? This was without permission! Why is this allowed…?“
What would Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki feel?
At the end of the day, it all comes to the laborious efforts of artists, the experiences, and the very essence of being a human that makes their art worthwhile. The question we, as consumers and partakers in trends, should ask ourselves is:
Are we as a society so hungry for trends that we forget who we hurt while taking part in a trend?
Would you like to see an entity take your work without your permission?
Replicate in seconds what you spent hours creating, and push out a half-baked knock-off?
And more importantly, ‘Is that really Art?’ or is our will to create and appreciate art slowly dying on the back of AI?
