The World of Studio Ghibli and AI Art

The world hasn’t actually turned into an anime, but it sure does feel that way.

An accelerating trend of turning images into styles made popular by Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli has taken over social media, leading to overloaded OpenAI GPUs and growing debate about artificial intelligence’s role in art and creation—plus a new Solana meme coin that’s reached a nearly $30 million market cap.

What is Studio Ghibli?

Studio Ghibli is an award-winning Japanese animation studio co-founded by well-known animator and filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki.

Founded in 1985, the studio boasts more than 20 films and is perhaps best known for its Oscar-winning anime features, The Boy and the Heron and Spirited Away. The latter film is listed inside the top 50 films by user rating on IMDb and is critically acclaimed.

> Spirited Away (all your money) photoshopped
> — lethe (@0xl3th3) March 26, 2025

Fantastical landscapes and keen attention to detail permeate all Ghibli films, which maintain a similar art style and aesthetic—one that now influences a bevy of image-altering requests made to OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.

All of that may be much to the chagrin of Miyazaki, who in a 2016 documentary said that AI technology was an “insult to life.”

> “everything is ghibli”
> — Kev.Ξth (@owocki) March 26, 2025

Nevertheless, the popularity of his studio’s work and imagery has flooded social media timelines as users flock to “Ghiblify” their own photos, turning ordinary images into those that look like they came from a Miyazaki film.

How do you ‘Ghiblify’ an image?

Want to make one of your pictures look like it was produced by Studio Ghibli? It’s easy.

With the latest image generator from OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, users can quickly and easily swap an everyday photo for a “Ghiblified” version with a few simple prompts.

Getting an image “Ghiblified” can be done in a few different ways. Users can upload an image to the GPT-4o model and prompt with something like, “Reproduce in the style of Studio Ghibli.”

After a minute or two of image generation, users should receive an updated version of the provided image. For example, we asked GPT-4o to reproduce the popular Bitcoin logo like Studio Ghibli.

You can also generate something entirely new by asking GPT-4o to produce an image in the style of Studio Ghibli, like creating a scene with a crypto enthusiast staring at charts.

Internet users and even the White House have been “Ghiblifying” nearly everything, including popular memes and even The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring trailer.

The impact on OpenAI

As the Ghibli trend began to build, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman remarked that for most of his 10 years in AI, people didn’t care—or even hated him. Then he woke up to hundreds of messages of him in “Ghibli style” as the world embraced his company’s latest capabilities. As of Thursday afternoon, Altman is still using his Ghibli-style profile picture.

> ChatGPT when another Studio Ghibli request comes in
> — Justine Moore (@venturetwins) March 26, 2025

However, producing Ghibli images has significantly impacted OpenAI. Altman indicated that the demand was so intense that capability rollouts for the free tier would be delayed.

> It’s super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT, but our GPUs are melting. We will introduce some rate limits while making it more efficient. The free tier will get 3 generations per day soon.
> — Sam Altman (@sama) March 27, 2025

As demand continued to rise, Altman mentioned that their GPUs were “melting,” necessitating rate limits.

The future of creation?

While Miyazaki’s thoughts on AI are well-documented, a larger debate about art and intellectual property has arisen from this trend.

> “It’s profoundly depressing seeing all the Studio Ghibli-styled AI output tacitly being used to promote OpenAI’s latest product. Miyazaki famously called AI-produced art ‘an insult to life itself’—and this ironically insults one of our greatest ever animators and artists.”
> — Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) March 26, 2025

Merchant’s thoughts echo a variety of artists disappointed that Miyazaki’s body of work is promoting a non-human tool creating instant art versus the laborious process of hand-drawn animation.

Yet some see a path for crypto to help. Jason Zhao, co-founder of Story Protocol, noted that “Studio Ghibli lost out on millions today” because AI operates in a broken marketplace where either creators win or AI does, making it a zero-sum game.

Pseudonymous Post Fiat token project founder goodalexander remarked on the problem of ensuring one’s life’s work isn’t “Ghibli-ed” without compensation: “The alternative is getting steamrolled by machines.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward