Due to a viral video of Hayao Miyazaki famously labeling an AI animation demonstration an “insult to life,” followers have extensively assumed that Studio Ghibli is vehemently against the know-how.
Nonetheless, Goro Miyazaki has instructed Bloomberg of their newest interview that the studio isn’t utterly towards the know-how.
With AI quickly advancing, it has managed to unfold its roots into virtually each business, particularly artistic, as increasingly more organisations and studios are adopting the know-how to resolve their bottlenecks. Even in such occasions, lots of followers checked out Ghibli as a flag-bearer of the anti-AI sentiment.
Director Goro Miyazaki, nevertheless famous that the studio didn’t significantly have any views, constructive or damaging, about AI.
In truth, he identified that if legendary director Isao Takahata, identified for helming The Story of Princess Kaguya and Grave of the Fireflies, had been alive in the present day, he would have been the primary to strive the substitute intelligence out.
“He was somebody who was very within the newest know-how,” Goro stated. “We’re not denying, or feeling damaging, about AI know-how itself.”
In accordance with Goro, anybody who positioned Ghibli on the forefront of anti-AI narratives was simply twisting the info for their very own comfort.
Goro Miyazaki Explains Why Ghibli Was Silent On OpenAI Controversy:
The director additionally revealed why Ghibli didn’t take challenge with the OpenAI “Ghiblification” controversy.
In March 2025, OpenAI launched a brand new model of its ChatGPT mannequin, which let customers create pictures as Ghibli-style knockoffs. Earlier than lengthy, the web was inundated with “Ghiblified” selfies, household pictures, and well-known film scenes.
Whereas there was vital backlash concerning the pattern for copying Ghibli’s iconic fashion with out compensation or consent, the studio’s executives had been content material to look at the saga play out. One of many firm’s executives even went with the movement by getting concerned within the pattern.
Goro pointed to the doujinshi tradition in Japan, the place followers make artwork derived from their favourite manga, anime, or online game characters, explaining why the AI craze didn’t look like a giant deal.
“We didn’t assume a lot of it, to be trustworthy,” Goro stated. “If somebody began making some huge cash out of it, then it might be an issue.”
Greater than AI, the studio is worried with the scenario surrounding streaming.
World audiences have entry to Ghibli movies through streaming platforms like Netflix and in addition HBO Max. Nonetheless, viewers in Japan wouldn’t have that luxurious at present, usually having to depend on tv broadcasts or buying DVDs.
Whereas viewers have voiced their frustrations, Ghibli executives are in no rush to promote home streaming rights.
“I work for a TV community, and we all know that linear TV is shedding its viewership,” the studio’s CEO Kenichi Yoda stated. “However on the similar time, with the Ghibli movies, once they go on TV, it turns into this entire occasion. All people is watching that movie on the similar time wherever they’re in Japan. After which it turns into this entire celebration, this massive competition virtually.”
The elders at Studio Ghibli are skeptical to the streaming mannequin, as revealed by Goro, with Toshio Suzuki being one in every of them. And so, the executives are ready, agreeing with the higher-ups on their resolution.
“Suzuki believes streaming companies will quickly grow to be no good,” Goro Miyazaki stated. “He believes they’ll fail. After which, he’s type of excited, ready for that to occur.”
Based in June 1985 by administrators Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata alongside producer Toshio Suzuki, Studio Ghibli has produced quite a few critically and commercially acknowledged animated movies, together with Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Princess Mononoke.
The studio’s most up-to-date function launch, The Boy and the Heron, received the Academy Award for Finest Animated Function on the 96th Academy Awards in 2024, marking the studio’s second Oscar win following Spirited Away in 2003.
Supply: Bloomberg
