The 'Studio Ghibli' AI filter is a disgrace
When tech undermines creativity
In 2016, a smart TV entered our living room. Suddenly, I could watch any movie or TV series I wanted. I could play, pause, and resume whenever I chose. As I scrolled through the options, an animation movie called My Neighbour Totoro appeared on Amazon Prime. Feeling adventurous, I pressed ‘Play’. The film showed two little girls, aged 10 and 4, flitting through fields. They ran in and out of their new home in countryside Japan. Their father, a professor, was helping them get ready for school.
As he looked through the window, I saw white fluffy clouds and pastel-green leaves swaying in the wind. The girls explored their house, opening cupboards and searching for secrets. Dust swirled from dark brown shelves. Soon, the younger sister ran outside toward an old tree with a grey hollow. The story introduced Totoro, a friendly creature who helps the girls navigate life’s small emotional struggles.
I was mesmerized—not because the story was new, but because it felt unlike any animated film I’d seen. Disney’s Cinderella and Marvel’s Spiderman felt unreal and different. On the other hand, these characters in My Neighbour Totoro had a watercolor-like texture. Watching them felt like seeing a painting come alive. The picture below may help you get a sense of how different Studio Ghibli art is from other Hollywood studios. To the left is a digitally created art for Toy Story by a Hollywood studio, to the right is a Studio Ghibli hand-drawn. Notice the difference in colours and shades, and you may also see how every hand-drawn feature on the face of both the humans and animals are distinct.
While I was engrossed in the movie, the doorbell rang and a friend came in. She saw what was playing on TV and gleefully announced that I had discovered the legendary Studio Ghibli. It turns out that I was joining the fan-club of Studio Ghibli a little late in the day and that this famous Japanese studio was beloved worldwide. That day, I also learned the name of one of the greatest living artists: Hayao Miyazaki, the man and mind behind Studio Ghibli. Later, I looked him up online. He seemed like a kind, white-haired grandfather. His hand-drawn style of art feels oddly out of place today, when most animation is digital (Spiderman, Mufasa, Moana). I still love Marvel, but Miyazaki’s films have left me mesmerized in a way no other animation has.
Last week—on March 25, 2025, a date now etched in the annals of utterly predictable chaos—ChatGPT unveiled its latest stroke of genius: the ‘Studio Ghibli’ filter. The AI bot graciously offered the masses something innocent and wholesome—the ability to transform any mediocre selfie or half-baked text prompt into a dreamy Miyazaki-style masterpiece.
And, to nobody’s surprise, the world lost its collective mind. Almost every human with a smartphone and a Wi-Fi signal decided their profile pictures needed a soft-focus, watercolor glow. ChatGPT’s parent company had to issue a desperate plea overnight "Please go slow in your requests for the Ghibli filter. Our servers are almost melting.” Turns out, millions of people simultaneously demanding Ghibli-fied avatars can, in fact, break things.
This week’s news story on the Lighter Side is about how technology can easily persuade large chunks of mankind to behave like fools; how technology has the ability to destroy little things that give us joy in life; and how technology can quietly learn to destroy our planet while we enjoy the little treats it throws our way.
Why am I miffed with ChatGPT?
ChatGPT’s "Studio Ghibli" filter was trained by using thousands of Miyazaki’s sketches, art work, and film stills—all without his consent. In my eyes, this is blatant copyright violation. One may call AI as innovation, but to me feeding AI models stolen information is no more than a mean act of theft. Tech companies say it's okay to use other people's art, books, or movies to train AI because they're "learning from it" like a student doing homework—not copying it exactly. They call this "fair use." Let me phrase their argument this way - if your friend helps you with an answer in an exam, and all you do is REWRITE the same answer in your words, would that be cheating?
Also artists are not exactly a super rich lot. Most artists don’t make much money—they get paid a small sum for drawings, writing books, or animating for movies. But when AI models like ChatGPT copy their work (the work that real artists spend years practicing), it is tech companies that get rich. The real artists—the ones who inspired the AI—get nothing. In this instance, Miyazaki, the man behind more than 4 decades of Studio Ghibli art gets not a dime, while ChatGPT grows in valuation by the billions, as more people use this tool.
How HARMLESS is AI?
That cute AI picture that people are making using Studio Ghibli, and is totally free, here is how much environmental damage it causes.
(a) Energy - one image generation uses the same amount of electricity that it takes to charge a full battery of your phone.
(b) Water - To generate one AI image, the servers need to be cooled. That’s done by water. The equivalent of 5 to 50 litres is used to cool the server each time one AI image is generated. That’s water real people regularly use for a full day of survival. Someone in India recently used this filter and produced a full 1 min 40 second movie. Somewhere, an entire lake or water body will have dried up.
(c ) Carbon footprint - Ever seen the swirls of smoke coming from a car as it drives along the highway? Now every time you generate a single AI image, it leaves behind an invisible carbon footprint roughly the same amount of CO₂ as a gas-powered car driving 6 kilometers non-stop.
Who pays for this damage? Last I heard, OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT will not be paying to refill lakes and rivers, or for cleaning up the planet’s atmosphere after we are all done playing with the Studio Ghibli filter.
Let me leave you with a story of Miyazaki…….Many many years before the launch of ChatGPT and AI, a group of techies had gone to visit Miyazaki in his office to show him a movie they had created using animation tools. The movie showed a robotically walking disabled person. Once the presentation ended, Miyazaki said that whoever made this technology knew nothing about the pain a real person with human disabilities felt. He shared a personal story about a friend he often visits, who could barely use his arm and had trouble even shaking someone’s hand. With a sullen look on his face, Miyazaki looked up at the techies and declared ‘I can't watch this stuff and find it interesting. 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. Tech tools like this are an insult to life itself.’
As someone wisely put it on Twitter recently…’I want AI to do my laundry and dishes while I do my writing and art. I do not want AI to do my art and writing, while I am left to do the laundry and dishes.’
Podcast to listen to
For space nerds, our recent episode on ISRO’s latest milestone will be a delight to listen to. It talks about how two satellites met each other in space, hugged each other while in orbit and then waved goodbye. This ability to get two satellites to meet each other and separate themselves from each other is a rather critical one. It appears that many of ISRO’s next few missions depend on the success of this manoeuvre. Find out how by listening to the episode.
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