Illumination Writes

If you’ve been active on the internet at all over the past couple weeks, you would have seen yet another AI trend sweeping social media—everyone and their dog uploading pictures of themselves, memes and world events into Chat GPT to change that image into the art style of Studio Ghibli, and more specifically into the art style of Hayao Miyazaki. I’ve had the privilege of watching many of the Studio Ghibli’s films in theaters over the past year or so and I’ve developed a deep love and respect for them as an art form. Everyone should at least watch one Studio Ghibli film before they die, because each of them carries a degree of excellence that is hard to match—which is like why the Ghibli style has taken the internet by storm.

Given that I have a great admiration for Hayao Miyazaki’s work, it should be of little surprise that seeing his style being posted by everyone as a cute trend angered me. Artists have been sounding the alarm bells about generative AI for months now—it’s high time we take a serious look as to why artists oppose AI art and the “Ghibli Trend” exposes those feelings perfectly.

From a legal perspective, it is blatant copyright infringement. Given the way we have to train AI, it’s nearly impossible to not have copyright infringement to some degree when it comes generating AI images. In order for a computer to process how to create an image in a particular style, or containing certain objects or elements, it first has to analyze other art pieces to make something similar. The problem with feeding AI people’s art, is that those artists never consented to have their intellectual property used that way. But because AI generated images are such a new technology, there are no legal protections in place that would protect artists from having their styles imitated. And it’s so odd that there is so little care for visual art, when there absolutely would be legal action taken if you created a movie from a book and sold thousands of tickets worldwide without getting the author’s or publisher’s consent to make a movie based on that intellectual property.  

When we look at a company like Open AI, which in is a free software, unless you want to pay one of the tiers for more features (starting at $20 a month, and I wonder who’s actually paying for that in this economy—but I digress) it’s hard not to think about the artists who are being negatively impacted financially by this. Producing art—whether it be music, painting, film, animation, writing—is how many people make a living for themselves. If a lay person can take sample images from an artist and plug them in AI to give them a similar picture in that artist’s style rather than commissioning them, that artist is now out of a job. Now you might argue, well art isn’t necessary for society to function, so what’s the issue? I would say you’re wrong.

Art is one of the pillars of society, and it is so desperately needed in dark times. I hold to the belief that all humans, whether they recognize it or not, have a proclivity to create things. Moreover, we all enjoy finding beauty in things that exist outside of ourselves. Art exists to fill that space. Even the earliest humans produced things of beauty, whether it be jewelry, pottery or images of what they decided to venerate. Art is an essential to life. Your favorite movie, song, even the poster that hangs on the wall of your bedroom would not exist without artists. Using generative AI to fill this space is a threat to artists, writers and creatives as a whole, and we are on the precipice of potentially putting a whole group of people who we rely on out of jobs and handing that over to a machine.

My roommate and I often talk about how when we were kids, we wanted robots to help us do the dishes or the laundry so that we would have more time to do the very thing that makes us feel more alive—creating. The potential of having the very thing that helps us to feel human handed over so willingly to AI is dangerous. We need to tread carefully with this technology as it develops.

Now I understand that AI is a useful tool. While I’m very cautious of using AI, I’m not against using to analyze, organize and summarize information so that I can learn something faster. The only time I have used ChatGPT was to convert a recipe from metric measurements to imperial, and it was very helpful. What I do have an issue with allowing a computer to outrightly create things without questioning the larger impacts that has on artists and humanity as whole. What happens to the value we put on art as a society at that point? Are we valuing people or are we only valuing their product?

People online have been reposting a quote from Miyazaki that he made in 2016 about AI wherein he said that it was “an insult to life itself”, however, I think there’s a more important quote here that’s overlooked. Miyazaki also said, “We humans are losing faith in ourselves…” (watch full video here). Our current society has become so complacent that we no longer have the drive or passion to spend years becoming good at something—to pour your heart and soul into making something for yourself. If you do lack the skills to make something that looks or feels the way you want it too, you can rely on those around you to fill in the areas where you lack. I’m not sure if we should be so quick to hand everything over to machines when we’ve been struggling with being self-isolated in the Western World.

Many others have commented that AI art feels soulless, and I hope that we will not become so numb that we forget what true art feels like. That we would be able to recognize both the sorrow and joy that an artist has walked through displayed in their art. I think ultimately, humans will always be the superior creators over AI. As a matter of fact, AI art wouldn’t exist without artists to begin with.

I think it poetic that Hayao Miyazaki’s art style was the one that brought this argument to a head. Most of his films have a man against nature theme, and are always inspiring the viewer to slow down and enjoy the smaller parts of life. Life is not about getting the fastest result possible to push you forward. Growth happens in process, it’s slow, painful, but is ultimately for our good. Art reflects the human experience, and I’m not sure if it’s right to hand art over to a non-human entity. In reality, “AI art” isn’t art at all, rather a petty imitation of other artists’ work that has become devoid of meaning. As we walk through this next technical revolution, I think it’s important that we don’t forget the value we have as humans when it comes to creating, that beauty is birthed from our experiences, and that highly advanced ones and zeros will never compare to relying on the skills and talents of those around you.