'An Insult To Life Itself': Hayao Miyazaki’s AI Criticism Resurfaces As OpenAI’s Ghibli-Style Image Trend Takes Over Social Media
'An Insult To Life Itself': Hayao Miyazaki’s AI Criticism Resurfaces As OpenAI’s Ghibli-Style Image Trend Takes Over Social Media
OpenAI's latest image-generation update has taken social media by storm, as users are flooding X, Instagram, and Reddit with Studio Ghibli-style images
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Not suprised, Miyazaki's art is deeply concerned with what it means to be human, and the beauty to be found there.
The art style is an superficial aesthetic of that beauty, not the heart of it.
And none of that heart is in ai generated images. They're souless immitations that ape the substance of his works without having any. Like how hallmark pretends to depict "love" with paper thin characters and sanitizes it of any real substance or meaning
It's striking isn't it how the debate around generative AI is essentially drawn along the line that separates good taste from bad. To win the debate we're going to need really good art.
Or a lot of irish car bombs, and I don't mean the drink
It definitely tracks that this same post in Reddit is overwhelmed with people supporting OpenAI on the matter.
It's a fundamental issue understanding what art is for sure. People who could really draw well could already copy his style perfectly, but just because you can perfectly copy it doesn't make it original, and thus have the same value. It's not that it has no value, just considerably less value than his films.
It's that total lack of originality with AI slavishly copying a style like this that shows its lack of creative value. It's like pressing play on a keyboard programmed with 20 top tunes of the 80s and randomly pressing the high hat key.
Sure, it enables someone who can't play the piano to "play" a song, but not really. It's the same getting AI to copy by rote someone else's style they developed, it requires no effort or application of originality.
I think you're barking up the right tree, but the way I'd put it is this: it gives people the ability to imitate an aesthetic without ever engaging with the thinking that underlies that aesthetic. It's almost inherently anti intellectual, in that way.
Ghibli's art comes from a profound love for liveliness, wonder, nature, and beauty that also respects the pain endured by its subjects. People talk shit on Ghibli as "the Disney of anime" but it's a backhanded compliment at worst because I think they're obliquely referring to how well Miyazaki executes on those feelings.
I think the show Arcane is one of the best examples of commercially released art in recent decades; interestingly, what happened is people actually accused it of using AI where there was none. Also Variety et al did a whole round of balking that anyone would invest in something so frivolous as serious animation for adults
There's always gonna be Capitalists who try and commodify art, but fundamentally humans are the the only ones who can make NEW insights that resonate with people RIGHT NOW. If AI IS ever able to observe the world and reflect on it and offer something new, in the way humans are, it would still be from their own perspective, not ours.