Don’t cry over the Ghibli-fication of images

While a debate about identity is welcome at a time when Artificial Intelligence is advancing frighteningly fast, one on the reproducibility of Ghibli Studio’s style holds little merit.

It seems the world has been spirited away (pun intended) by Ghibli AI – a feature which allows images to be changed to reflect the aesthetic of a work produced by Studio Ghibli – a Japanese animation company founded by the renowned Hayao Miyazaki. 

In India, politicians have begun to jump in on the trend as well, even as many are left questioning the ethicality of it all. At the core of the qualm is a copyright issue. If AI can replicate Ghibli’s style of animation then is it not infringing on the trademark style of the Japanese studio? 

While many grapple with this question, an old clip of Miyazaki calling AI an ‘insult to life itself’ has resurfaced. The New York Times also questioned whether people should be able to re-create Ghibli-style artwork just because they love it. 

The simple answer is that it is impossible to stop people from doing so. That genie is already out of the bottle. 

French philosopher and poet Paul Valéry in The Conquest of Ubiquity notes “We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.” He said this in 1928. 

Walter Benjamin would in his 1935 essay – The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction – draw upon Valery’s observations to frame the argument that in any mechanical reproduction, the replica loses the ‘aura’ – a term Benjamin defines as being intrinsic to the original work of art. To put it simply – the artist seeing the sunset over the hills would capture it in a painting because being witness to the scene they could imbibe the aura of it. But, an AI replicating or reimagining the same image would lack this ‘aura’ since it would be twice removed – the first register being the actual sunset, the second being the artist’s interpretation of the same. 

So, for everyone lamenting what the Ghibli-fication of images might mean for the future of films and animation – it will mean nothing. The AI reimagination is more of a novelty product and not an actual artwork. None of the couples posting Ghibli-fied images on Instagram is claiming Miyazaki had anything to do with it. 

Another argument that has popped up is that AI removes the hard work that goes into creating an artwork – a scene that took Ghibli over a year to make could be rendered by AI in minutes if not seconds. But…is that not the point of AI? Have we not been touting its ability to do tasks at speeds unfathomable until now? Moreover, if Ghibli-fied images are so irksome, where is the rallying cry against Van Gogh’s Starry Night printed on innumerable tees? None of those are painstakingly drawn, they are printed – on tees, bottles, slippers – you name it. 

A caveat is that artworks in the public domain can be replicated, whereas this is Ghibli’s property and thus AI enters the realm of copyright. An argument can be made here that the AI is merely copying the style, not the actual work, and is applying that style to reimagine a picture. However, Jonathan Lam, a storyboard artist who works in video games and animation, told The New York Times “To a lot of people, having our art stolen, they don’t view it as anything personal — like, ‘Oh, well, you know, it’s just a style; you can’t copyright a style. But I would argue that for us, our style is actually our identity. It is what sets us apart from each other. It’s what makes us marketable to clients.”

This question about one’s identity is likely to be increasingly challenged by AI. With AI-generated content blurring the lines between man and machine, we could be left questioning our very perceptions, and the world might see itself polarised into ardent critics of such AI and heavy users of the same – at least that is what Andrew Peterson, Assistant Professor at the University Poitiers posits. 

While a debate about identity is welcome at a time when AI is advancing frighteningly fast, one on the reproducibility of Ghibli Studio’s style holds little merit, because as Benjamin succinctly puts it – In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.