AI Copyright Concerns Raised by OpenAI's Viral Studio Ghibli Moment

It's been just a day since ChatGPT unleashed its new AI image generator, and social media is already buzzing with AI-crafted memes styled after Studio Ghibli. You know, the iconic Japanese animation studio behind hits like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Spirited Away"? In the past 24 hours, we've seen everything from Elon Musk to "The Lord of the Rings" and even President Donald Trump reimagined in that enchanting Ghibli aesthetic. Heck, even OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, sporting a Ghibli-style profile pic, probably whipped up by GPT-4o's image generator. Folks are having a blast uploading their pics and asking ChatGPT to give them a Ghibli makeover.

pic.twitter.com/M8B7eqfNzR

— Moon Parameter (@ParamMoon) March 26, 2025

This latest move by OpenAI comes hot on the heels of Google's similar AI image feature in its Gemini Flash model, which went viral earlier this month when people used it to zap watermarks off images. Both OpenAI's and Google's new tools make it a breeze to mimic the styles of copyrighted works—just type in a prompt and voila! But here's the kicker: how are these AI tools learning to copy these styles? Are they training on copyrighted stuff, and if so, is that even legal?

That's the million-dollar question fueling a bunch of lawsuits against AI model developers right now.

According to Evan Brown, an IP lawyer at Neal & McDevitt, tools like GPT-4o's image generator are kinda stuck in a legal gray area. Style itself isn't protected by copyright, so OpenAI isn't breaking the law just by making Ghibli-esque images. But, Brown reckons it's possible OpenAI trained its model on a ton of Ghibli film frames. And whether that's fair use? Well, that's still up in the air in court.

“I think this raises the same question we’ve been wrestling with for a while now,” Brown told me. “What are the copyright implications of scraping the web and stuffing it into these databases?”

The New York Times and other publishers are suing OpenAI, claiming the company trained its AI on their copyrighted works without so much as a thank you or a dime. Similar lawsuits are flying at other AI bigwigs like Meta and Midjourney.

In a statement to TechCrunch, an OpenAI spokesperson said ChatGPT won't copy the style of living artists, but it's cool with mimicking broader studio styles. But hey, don't forget, there are living artists behind those studio styles, like Studio Ghibli's co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki.

Turns out, folks are using GPT-4o's image generator to recreate styles from other studios and artists too. Someone made a Marc Andreessen portrait in Dr. Seuss's style, and a couple even reimagined their wedding photos in Pixar's style.

studio ghibli is out, dr seuss is in pic.twitter.com/4ECxwLLkoj

— Jordi Hays (@jordihays) March 26, 2025

We put a bunch of popular AI image generators to the test—including those in Google's Gemini, xAI's Grok, and Playground.ai—to see how well they could pull off the Ghibli look. OpenAI's new tool nailed it, creating the most spot-on Ghibli-style images.