I asked our PR & Growth Experts: Recently, the appearance of ChatGPT-generated Ghibli-style AI images has sparked a growing trend on social media. Although Hayao Miyazaki (one of the founders of Studio Ghibli) once said in an NHK documentary that AI in art is soulless - even offensive - Studio Ghibli has yet to issue a statement on the matter. How does this affect the art industry? Do you think that the boundaries between artistic ethics and creation should be considered separately?

Here is the insight from our experts.

• Produce human-centered art to resonate with real people
• The soul is impossible to replicate
• Use it for reference, inspiration, and even base layouts
• A signal how audiences gravitate toward familiarity
• Remaking those threads into a new tapestry of expression
• Aesthetic mimicry without internal principle
• Familiar-looking content without its spiritual anchor
• The process without the why is just noise
• An aesthetic cycle lacking genuine storytelling understanding
• What’s left looks like art, but doesn’t feel like it.
• AI is democratizing the process of creation
• It’s not creativity being shared.
• They look clean but lack life.
• Art holds up when it’s grounded in something personal
• Art reduced to a prompt, not a process
• It dilutes the meaning behind the original
• The tech is not at fault
• We need licensing systems for artists
• The issue is when they profit without attribution
• What anchors the meaning of visual identity?
• AI makes art disposable
• Honor a style, don't exploit
• It might affect the next generation’s appreciation for craft
• The line between inspiration and theft

Produce human-centered art to resonate with real people

Emily Reynolds-Bergh, Owner at R Public Relations

"AI is going to be a hot topic in the arts sector for a long time to come, and we should expect this conversation to evolve by the day. As of right now, I recommend my team and clients use AI as an idea generation tool but not as a means to an end. Yes, AI may very well spur trends and aesthetic preferences in the future, but for now, my team’s mission is to produce human-centered art and campaigns that resonate with real people. AI can only get us so far."

The soul is impossible to replicate

Kevin Shahnazari, Founder & CEO at FinlyWealth

"The AI-generated explosion of Ghibli-style art is a fundamental tension of our digital age. When AI replicates the unique style of Miyazaki—a style developed over decades of human creativity and cultural narrative—it calls into question our value for original human work. At a recent technology conference in Tokyo, I interviewed a number of digital artists who were intrigued and unsettled by AI's capacity to reproduce the visual vocabulary that Ghibli spent decades refining.

This development compels us to grapple with unsavory questions regarding the essence of artistic identity. The art world is confronted with its greatest challenges as technological impediments to reproducing "Ghibli-like" images vanish, but the essence and intent behind original Ghibli work—what Miyazaki most likely is referring to by AI being "soulless"—are impossible to replicate. I think we have to separate technical imitation from real artistic vision.

In the future, we will have to create new paradigms that both protect the rights of original creators and studios while permitting technological innovation to thrive. The silence of Studio Ghibli on the matter (other than responding to false allegations) indicates that they are weighing their options in this delicate circumstance instead of making a hasty decision."

Use it for reference, inspiration, and even base layouts

Jasmine Charbonier, Content Marketing Strategist

"Here's what's actually happening on the ground: These AI tools are getting scary good at mimicking Ghibli's signature look. I recently watched a colleague pump out 50 Ghibli-style backgrounds in about an hour (something that would've taken weeks or months to hand-draw). The tech's improving so fast it's making my head spin.

The impact on studios is massive. Some smaller animation houses I work with are already using AI to create rough concept art and backgrounds — cutting production time by about 60%. And let's be real, it's not just about speed — these tools are getting better at capturing that magical Ghibli essence that used to take artists years to master.

The thing is, I've noticed a lot of younger artists in my studio actually embracing AI as part of their workflow. They're using it for reference, inspiration, and even base layouts — then adding their own soul and creativity on top. It's becoming another tool in their arsenal, like Photoshop or a drawing tablet.

But here's where it gets complicated: Last month, I worked on a project where we used AI to generate background elements. The results were technically perfect, but something was missing — that human touch that makes Ghibli films so special. Those happy accidents and imperfections that give artwork its character just weren't there.

The reality is that AI isn't going anywhere. I've seen how it's already changing our industry — from cutting production costs by roughly 40% to enabling smaller studios to tackle bigger projects. But I strongly believe we need to establish clear guidelines about AI usage and attribution."

A signal how audiences gravitate toward familiarity

Dorian Menard, Founder at Search Scope

"My background centers on decoding human intent online, so I think a lot about how content, especially visual content, connects with people at scale.

The rise of Ghibli-style AI art on social is not just a tech trend but more of a signal. It shows how audiences gravitate toward emotion and familiarity, even if the origin isn't human. Miyazaki’s stance makes sense to me. He built a world driven by emotion, sweat, and imperfection. AI lacks that raw edge, the nuance that comes from lived experience. So when people replicate his style through prompts and filters, it does raise questions. Not just about originality, but about intent. Are we appreciating a style or are we imitating something deeper without understanding it?

I think ethics in art and the creative process cannot be viewed separately. If you are creating something that borrows the soul of someone else’s work, without contributing your own, then it becomes hollow. Without purpose or perspective, it becomes a decorative noise.

Ethics in creation is not about rules. It’s about intention. And audiences can tell the difference."

Remaking those threads into a new tapestry of expression

Jade Mitchell, Senior Copywriter at Catchy Agency

"I have a visceral reaction to plagiarism as an affront to good art, but as a professional writer, hobbyist painter, and sometime curator, "copying" is also the inevitable first step for the human artist too. We start by capturing what we see, and as we collect influences and inspiration, we remake those threads into a new tapestry of expression. Where art will always supersede even the most accurate AI duplicate is in its meaning, its story. An image is merely one facet of meaning. I don't believe Gen AI algorithms, even with the most perfect pixels as ingredients, can infuse what they create with the same sadness, happiness, loneliness, yearning, peace, or pain that real art can."

Aesthetic mimicry without internal principle

Zazie Productions

"I work under the moniker of Zazie Productions—as a prolific music producer, graphic artist, ethical hacker, experimental writer, and filmmaker within the context of digital mediums. I’ve had the output, proficiency, and turnover rate often jokingly compared to that of a “machine.”

I am still a member of Gen Z; I have a nuanced perspective. Steal as many points as you want (with the appropriate credit); I have a lot I need to convey.

I predate the recent AI boom—not in years, but in intensity. I’ve long been obsessed with randomization as an artistic method—Eno’s Oblique Strategies, Cage’s I Ching scores, Koji Kondo’s environmental motifs. So when I see Ghibli-style AI images flooding social media, I don’t react with blanket condemnation or uncritical praise. What I see is aesthetic mimicry without internal principle. Ghibli isn’t just a “look”—it’s a deeply animist philosophy. It’s hand-drawn time. Memory as rhythm. An embodied ethic. So when a model spits out “Ghibli-style” clouds and lens flares, but none of the pacing, moral ambiguity, or silence that makes Ghibli sacred—it feels like karaoke with a haunted mask.

Back in 2018, before “generative AI” became a marketing term and every app claimed to be “powered by machine learning,” I was already deep in the trenches of what I called algorithmic hauntology. I used This Person Does Not Exist (when it was still called This Face Doesn’t Exist) to generate uncanny portraits that I’d pair with fragmented bio-poems made from cut-up Craigslist posts and psychiatric case studies. I fed random Wikipedia entries into Markov chain generators and built a custom digital poetry tool using Google Sheets + Regex to remix phrases into glitchy asemic fragments. I used WolframTones to generate indeterminate MIDI files in Lydian-Mixolydian hybrid scales, then fed those into GarageBand’s string ensemble emulator to simulate compositions that sounded like medieval ghost choirs corrupted by satellite static. I wasn’t doing this to be edgy—I was a weird, curious kid who saw patterns everywhere and wanted to collaborate with systems that didn’t know they were making art.

That said, I reject the purity panic too. I’m not interested in becoming a nostalgia fundamentalist. AI isn’t the end of art, but it is the acceleration of aesthetic entropy. It flattens the archive and rewards style over soul. But to dismiss the tools entirely is to miss the chance to misuse them. I’m interested in creative abuse, in misaligning the model’s logic until it says something true by accident. That’s art. Not prompting for someone else’s style. Not stealing the visual grammar of creators who never consented to be digitized."

Familiar-looking content without its spiritual anchor

Sheraz Ali, Founder at HARO Links Builder

"The explosion of Ghibli-esque images generated by AI is a critical paradigm shift in what we understand by creative ownership. Ghibli films are distinct not merely by their aesthetic look but also because of the philosophic and emotional depth Miyazaki invests in each picture. When AI produces this aesthetic but without the attendant artistic intent, it presents a rather provocative paradox: the familiar-looking content without its spiritual anchor.

This movement has had enormous ripple effects across the art industry. Many of the professional illustrators I collaborate with are having commission work disappear as companies experiment with AI options. One illustrator who did Ghibli-style commercial work experienced requests drop by 60% in six months as clients began experimenting with AI generation tools. The financial impact on working artists has been instantaneous and tangible.

Meanwhile, we've seen new creative communities develop around these tools. Digital artists are taking AI-generated content and using it as inspiration for original work, mixing hybrid workflows that wouldn't otherwise be possible. This suggests the technology isn't just displacing human creativity but altering the way it expresses itself.

The ethics are bound up with the process of creation because art is grounded in social and economic reality. Miyazaki's argument that AI art has no soul responds to a profound truth: authentic artistic creation distills human experience in a way algorithms cannot. But change always disrupts the status quo, requiring us to rethink what we value in creative work.

"The argument over AI art isn't technology vs. tradition – it's realizing that meaning in art comes from human intention, conflict, and experience, things no algorithm can actually reproduce."

The process without the why is just noise

Josh Steppling, Owner at TreasureCoast.com

"When I first saw AI images in the Ghibli style, they stopped me—but not in a good way. It looked right, but it didn’t feel right. That feeling matters. In my work, I’ve seen how real art connects people to place, memory, and meaning. When machines imitate that without the lived experience behind it, something gets lost.

Ethics and creation can’t be pulled apart. If the process forgets the why, then the result is just noise, no matter how beautiful it looks."

An aesthetic cycle lacking genuine storytelling understanding

Danilo Coviello, Founding Partner at Espresso Translations

"I am watching people repost AI-generated Ghibli-style art like it's an actual tribute, but it feels hollow. Color, shading and scene ordering do exist in this film but none of these crafting elements convey the peculiar sense of stillness that defines a Miyazaki production. Miyazaki's signature feeling of uncomfortable stillness is completely absent from this work despite the visibility of other signature elements. That discomfort is the soul of it. When we localize Ghibli films, I always have to ask, *why* is a character silent here? What aren’t they saying? AI does not think like that. It does not sit with a story for months. The film lacks the same search for meaning which Miyazaki explored in NHK because it does not display the director's negative attitude toward technology. The replication reaches 10 million shares in a short seven days for one of those fake Ghibli AI creations. The content participates in an aesthetic cycle that lacks understanding of genuine storytelling elements.

All ethical elements remain inseparable from their creative foundations. When doing translation work I must avoid replacing cultural-specific terms with machine-translations since it deletes their contextual meaning. Same thing here. The artificial intelligence systems create duplications that lack preservation of content memory. I would feel fierce anger towards someone who trained a model on our Italian fairytale adaptations and tried to present it as original work. I’m not against tech. I use CAT tools daily. Process appreciation and understanding human motivation in creation remain absolute requirements."

What’s left looks like art, but doesn’t feel like it.

Abhishek Shah, Founder at Testlify

"The rise of Ghibli-style AI-generated art brings up a serious tension between technological creativity and artistic integrity. At first, it felt like a sweet tribute — a moment where artists and fans around the world could recreate that warm, nostalgic magic. It brought global recognition to a style many grew up loving. But alongside the admiration, it also sparked a deeper question of integrity. Can something truly be called "art" if it's built on the style of another without their permission or soul behind it?

That’s where the line starts to blur. AI can create beautiful visuals, sure. But when it mimics the unique storytelling and hand-drawn charm of someone like Miyazaki — who famously called AI “soulless.” It raises the question: are we honoring his legacy or diluting it? Artistic freedom and ethics can’t really be separated. When you remove intent, emotion, and respect from the equation, what’s left might look like art, but it doesn’t feel like it."

AI is democratizing the process of creation

Matthew Oldham, Founder at BipBapBop

"Artists have always been inspired by other artists. What are the famous art movements throughout history, such as Impressionism, Realism and Symbolism, other than groups of artists inspired by each other's work and creating similar content. And artists haven't always been happy about the situation. We even have the saying "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" to console creators who've been copied. Does the fact that a machine has been inspired by an artist's work suddenly make this an ethical issue? What generative AI is actually doing is democratizing the process of creation, removing bottlenecks around creative ability, leaving the vision of the creator as the only constraint. When we've finished creating Ghiblified social media profiles, the big question that remains is what is the purpose of art?"

It’s not creativity being shared.

Moti Gamburd, CEO at CARE Homecare

"AI-generated art feels accessible, but it thrives on uncredited labor. The style is trained on original pieces pulled from countless creators who never gave permission. It’s not creativity being shared. It is work being recycled without acknowledgment. To feed off craft you didn’t earn is to line the pockets of the capitalists all while local artists are relegated to a subclass of overworked-yet-underpaid jobs, something Hayao Miyazaki fought against when he joined Toei Doga in 1963.

Studio Ghibli’s art takes time most people don’t realize. Animators can spend up to a month drawing a few seconds of footage, adjusting every frame to reflect emotion and texture. When someone clicks a button to recreate that look in seconds, it dismisses the years of training and the hours of work behind each scene.

Real artists are the ones losing out. AI-generated visuals give companies and individuals a reason not to hire illustrators, designers, or animators. What looks efficient today means fewer paid opportunities tomorrow. Personally, AI can be used as a tool to create art, like in editing, but the finishing touches and major details should still be credited behind someone’s brain. Otherwise, we will be in a world where art is repetitive."

They look clean but lack life.

Wes Wakefield, Founder at Pro Coffee Gear

"I am seeing more AI-generated Ghibli-style images pop up online, and honestly, it hits weird. They look clean, but they don’t feel alive. That’s the thing. A Miyazaki frame takes hours of human decisions — how light bends, how a leaf moves in the wind, how a kid’s eyes widen at something magical. AI can copy the look, but it skips the part where someone feels their way through that moment. We’ve worked with illustrators before on packaging and signage for specialty cafes, and there's always back-and-forth, tiny changes based on mood or storytelling. That nuance doesn’t exist with AI. You end up with art that looks perfect but says nothing.

The main problem arises from Ghibli's refusal to acknowledge or communicate regarding the situation. The organization refused to deal with the AI image deluge while making a statement about one single fake image. That silence is loud. The art world involves both creation and preservation of artistic cultures linked to original artworks. It would be deceptive for someone to train a model with 5,000 hours of barista videos before trying to replace human skilled baristas. Your reaction would be laughter because machines lack the ability to read human moods or display natural instinct in serving customers. Same with art. A process that goes beyond technique contains emotional decision making as its fundamental essence."

Art holds up when it’s grounded in something personal

Riley Westbrook, Co-Founder at Valor Coffee

"I lead creative across everything we do, from our cafés and product design to the brand voice and visuals. We started with a cart and now have two shops, a roastery, a wholesale program, and a full catering setup. It’s all grown fast, but we’ve kept one rule consistent the whole way: the work needs to mean something. That’s why this AI Ghibli thing doesn’t sit right with me.

These images look polished and familiar, which is why people are sharing them like wildfire. But when you stop and actually look at what’s behind them, it becomes clear that they’re not built from anything real. They pull from a style that took decades to shape, a style that came from how Miyazaki sees the world. His work comes from memory, grief, patience, and how he’s processed those things over time. That kind of detail doesn’t come out of a generator. It comes out of a person who’s willing to sit with an idea and let it change before it becomes something worth showing.

What worries me most is how fast people treat this stuff like it’s just another creative tool. It’s not. These models didn’t invent their style. They were fed thousands of images, many from artists who never gave permission. Now the same style that took years to build gets spit back out in seconds, with no credit and no context. And somehow, that output gets called original. That doesn’t make sense.

We’ve seen a similar thing happen in coffee. Someone buys a bag from a roaster, copies the flavor notes and style, slaps a new label on it, and calls it their own. But they didn’t source it. They didn’t roast it. They didn’t build the supply chain. They just repeated the result. That kind of shortcut always looks fine on the surface. The people who care can feel when it’s missing the real work behind it.

I don’t think this is about drawing lines between ethics and creativity. That split doesn’t really exist. Every creative decision you make carries weight. Who you’re referencing. What you’re borrowing. What you choose to put your name on. Those choices either respect the work that came before or they don’t. When a machine is trained on someone else’s labor and spits out something in that person’s style, it’s not doing creative work. It’s running a process.

Art holds up when it’s grounded in something personal. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but it needs to come from someone who actually had to think through what they wanted to say. When we start accepting output that skips that part, we make it harder for people doing real creative work to keep going."

Art reduced to a prompt, not a process

Liam Perkins, Digital Marketing Manager at Privr

"The explosion of Ghibli-style AI art feels like a love letter to fans craving that nostalgic magic. But here’s the rub: Miyazaki’s worlds are felt, not just seen. His stories grapple with eco-grief, war, and childhood innocence, themes etched from human struggle.

AI can mimic the aesthetic, but it can’t replicate the ache behind Princess Mononoke’s deforestation allegory or the quiet resilience in Spirited Away. That dissonance is where ethics clash with creation.

For artists, it’s a double-edged katana. On one hand, AI democratizes Ghibli’s visual language, letting indie creators riff on its beauty without legal hiccups. But it also floods markets with “soulless” derivatives, devaluing the painstaking labor of animators who hand-paint light through leaves. The real threat isn’t competition, it’s commodification. When Ghibli-esque backdrops sell for $5 on Etsy, it reduces art to a prompt, not a process.

Should ethics and creation be split? Nope. Miyazaki’s ethos that art is humanity’s rebuttal to despair is inseparable from his craft. AI can be a tool, but when it erases the “why” behind the “what,” we risk making art a souvenir, not a story.

The solution involves giving credit where it's due: platforms could tag AI-generated works as "Miyazaki-inspired," directing royalties to studios or funds that support the training of new animators."

It dilutes the meaning behind the original

MJ Jay, Founder at YORKSHIRE FABRIC SHOP

"I believe AI-generated Ghibli-style images are a cultural shortcut: pretty on the surface, but missing the decades of emotional layering behind Miyazaki's storytelling. People are fascinated because it mimics the texture, but it skips the struggle. That tension right there is what the art industry is choking on. When imitation spreads faster than intention, it dilutes the meaning behind the original. And worse, it confuses audiences into thinking derivative is equal to authentic.

So, to be fair, ethics and creation are already separate forces. But once you commercialize mimicry, those lines should not stay blurry. If AI is going to borrow the soul of a style, it better come with clear authorship, attribution and accountability. Otherwise, we are just decorating theft and calling it inspiration.

If your craft has heart, protect it. If your tech has reach, ground it."

The tech is not at fault

Benjamin Tom, Editor and Marketer at Electricity Monster

"So, the rise of AI Ghibli art is like watching electricity behave artistically. It flows, reacts, and powers ideas instantly. People input “sleepy suburb under lantern light” and boom...you get something that feels like it belongs in a 90s anime. It is oddly efficient, which, for someone who studies systems, makes perfect sense. AI replicates without resting. It absorbs styles like current flows through wire. It mimics taste by statistical force.

Where it gets messy is in moral voltage. If I take an image styled like Ghibli and sell it as merch without Miyazaki’s influence ever involved, well, that feels like pirated energy. The effort was pulled from a cultural grid without paying for usage. That is not art. That is siphoning. The tech is not at fault. The way people frame their use of it is where the short circuits happen.

In 10 years, I expect we will have digital artwork tagged and labeled by origin, effort, and source. Imagine an NFT or JPEG with a meter that reads “73% AI-generated, 22% hand-tuned, 5% lifted from dataset X.” That level of traceability would allow artists and AI users to coexist transparently.

No one needs to ban the tech. We just need to wire it better."

We need licensing systems for artists

Michael Benoit, Founder at California Contractor Bond & Insurance Services

"I believe AI-generated Ghibli-style images are a cultural shortcut: pretty on the surface, but missing the decades of emotional layering behind Miyazaki's storytelling. People are fascinated because it mimics the texture, but it skips the struggle. That tension right there is what the art industry is choking on. When imitation spreads faster than intention, it dilutes the meaning behind the original. And worse, it confuses audiences into thinking derivative is equal to authentic.

So, to be fair, ethics and creation are already separate forces. But once you commercialize mimicry, those lines should not stay blurry. If AI is going to borrow the soul of a style, it better come with clear authorship, attribution and accountability. Otherwise, we are just decorating theft and calling it inspiration.

If your craft has heart, protect it. If your tech has reach, ground it."

The issue is when they profit without attribution

Barbara Robinson, Marketing Manager at Weather Solve

"There is something poetic about Ghibli-style art being filtered through AI because it mimics how humans romanticize the natural world.

Ghibli films use visual softness and surrealism to frame forests, weather, and seasons with reverence. So, when AI generates scenes that look like a rice field dreaming of a spirit deer, it mirrors how we project emotion onto landscape. For someone like me, who works with climate structures, it feels like a machine learning how we wish nature looked.

That being said, ethics in art become cloudy when emotional labor is skipped entirely.

If AI generates 100 dreamy stills in 30 seconds based on prompts stolen from 12 artists, then who actually made anything? That is not remix. That is reproduction minus reflection. Ghibli work has a cultural fingerprint, and AI images built on that style ride the nostalgia without touching the experience. It is kind of like printing poetry from a word cloud and calling it personal.

Still, I do not think ethics and creativity need to sit in the same room. Creativity explores. Ethics measures.

If the two collide, then you deal with it, but they are separate concepts. Anyone can dream using AI. The issue is when they profit without attribution or pretend it is a soul-touched product. In which case, the problem is not the tool. It is the story the person tells about what they made."

What anchors the meaning of visual identity?

Rick Newman, Founder & CEO at UCON Exhibitions

"We design, fabricate and build custom exhibition stands for businesses across Australia. I personally design immersive brand experiences in physical spaces that rely heavily on original visuals, custom storytelling and creative intent. So when I see AI mimic something as emotionally precise as Studio Ghibli, I always look at what it replaces. This kind of replication shakes the foundation of what people consider human craft.

I do believe the issue is not that AI is making art. People have been using tools to create since charcoal on cave walls. The shift is that AI shortcuts process without context.

In a studio, that context might mean 40 hours on a hand-painted frame, a team of 20 animators and a narrative arc that took two years to build. With AI, someone can copy the vibe in five minutes using six words. That feels hollow. Worse, it flattens legacy work into a disposable template. Artists who spent decades refining their style are now treated like filters. That disconnect changes how future generations value effort, precision and originality.

Of course, this has impact. Deep. Real. Cultural.

If imitation becomes standard and authorship gets fuzzy, then what anchors the meaning of visual identity? This is not just an art debate. It bleeds into advertising, architecture, product design, even exhibits like mine. Every time a brand chooses a prompt over a person, they save dollars but dilute distinction. I mean, what happens when you walk into a trade show and every booth was built by the same bot? You forget them all by lunch.

So, to say the least, artistic ethics and creative freedom need different conversations. One is law, the other is legacy. Mixing the two just muddies the value of both."

AI makes art disposable

Mimi Nguyen, Founder at Cafely

"I’ve been seeing the trend you’re referring to, and though harmless as most people think it is; the use of AI has long-term negative effects on our environment and brings great disrespect to human artists who put in hours, even years of work to create art.

This is one reason why our team at Cafely limits the use of generative AI only for brainstorming ideas, speeding up mundane tasks, and analyzing customer behavior; but never let it have the final say for our creative endeavors.

What AI or “AI artists” are doing is make art disposable and treat them as mere aesthetics, which is how these Ghibli-style images came to be. Some are even jumping on human artists' creations with an AI-generated style they claim is much better-looking and lifelike than the original. Which I find also goes against copyright infringement.

This can also mean less work for human artists as most employers will simply prefer the cheaper, more convenient alternative by investing in AI tools. We do use a few AI tools ourselves but establish specific guidelines for proper use and still work towards ensuring every content we put out is human sounding enough to successfully connect with our target audience.

This is also why I feel it’s important to always view artistic ethics and creation as one. Not only does an individual’s moral standards affect the quality of their work but also gives them the human ability to get inspiration from their experiences and use it to attach meaning to their art."

Honor a style, don't exploit

Borets Stamenov, Co-Founder & CEO at SeekFast.org

"The Ghibli-style AI trend hits a nerve because it mimics a deeply human aesthetic without any of the human struggle behind it. People aren’t reacting to style theft—they’re reacting to soul theft. Miyazaki’s disgust wasn’t about tech—it was about detachment from meaning.

This matters because in art, context is part of the value. Ghibli isn’t just visuals—it’s philosophy, process, and pain. AI skips all that and still reaps attention. That’s not innovation; it’s imitation optimized for virality.

Ethics and creation can’t be fully separated. Tools shape intent. When you use AI to honor a style, that’s homage. When you use it to farm likes while cutting out the original voice, that’s exploitation. The tech isn’t evil—but how we use it absolutely can be."

It might affect the next generation’s appreciation for craft

Kal Dimitrov, Content & Marketing Expert at Enhancv

"The Ghibli-style AI trend hits a nerve because it mimics a deeply human aesthetic without any of the human struggle behind it. People aren’t reacting to style theft—they’re reacting to soul theft. Miyazaki’s disgust wasn’t about tech—it was about detachment from meaning.

This matters because in art, context is part of the value. Ghibli isn’t just visuals—it’s philosophy, process, and pain. AI skips all that and still reaps attention. That’s not innovation; it’s imitation optimized for virality.

Ethics and creation can’t be fully separated. Tools shape intent. When you use AI to honor a style, that’s homage. When you use it to farm likes while cutting out the original voice, that’s exploitation. The tech isn’t evil—but how we use it absolutely can be."

The line between inspiration and theft

Anders Bill, Cofounder/CPO at Superfiliate

"To be honest, the Ghibli-AI thing is tricky. I mean, on one hand, it is fun to see people riff on iconic styles. On the flip side, when tools like ChatGPT or image models start mimicking a signature look without credit, compensation or consent, you are not remixing--you are extracting. The problem is not just aesthetic. It is economic. When people used our product to auto-generate landing pages using branded content from real influencers, we had to build a whole logic system to credit those creators and track payout flow. That was not fluff. It was literally the ethical line between inspiration and theft.

So yeah, I think the art world needs to separate ethics from execution--but only long enough to debate it in plain terms. Ask: who benefits, who profits and who gets erased in the process? Style is not just visual. It is cultural, emotional, and in Ghibli's case, generational. If you flatten that into a prompt without context, you are stripping the soul out of the work, not celebrating it. And at the end of the day, calling something "AI art" does not absolve the humans behind it from taking responsibility for what they make--or what they mimic."

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