Like Studio Ghibli-style ChatGPT portraits? Founder Hayao Miyazaki thinks AI-generated art is ‘insult to life itself’

An old clip of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki reacting strongly to AI-generated animation has resurfaced on social media.

All of a sudden, Studio Ghibli-like art has taken over the internet. From portraits to movie stills, many are using OpenAI’s latest native image generator to reimagine Studio Ghibli’s iconic animation style. However, its co-founder Hayao Miyazaki is strictly against such practices, as evident in a resurfaced clip from his documentary where he termed such art to be nothing less than an ‘insult to life itself.’

Hayao Miyazaki had stated that he has no interest in AI-generated animation.

What Miyazaki said

A X (formerly Twitter) user shared the clip from the NHK documentary series NHK Special: Hayao Miyazaki — The One Who Never Ends, where Miyazaki was seen addressing a group of students who had proposed a machine that would create animation. “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 this is an insult to life itself.”

‘We are nearing the end of our times’

One of the student presenters says, “This is just our experiment. We don't mean to do anything by showing it to the world. We would like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do.” To this Miyazaki responds, "I feel like we are nearing the end of our times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves.

Miyazaki came out of retirement to make the animated fantasy film The Boy and the Heron. The film received critical acclaim and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Last year, Miyazaki was honoured with this year's prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, often referred to as Asia's Nobel Prize. He is the director behind critically acclaimed movies like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, and Ponyo.