In 2016, animator and Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki found his eyes parked in front of an AI-generated animation demo.

It reminded the Japanese animation director of a friend he frequently visited with a mobile impairment, who struggled to muster a rudimentary high-five. “Thinking of him, I can't watch this stuff and find it interesting”, he said.

“Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted… I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”

“I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.”

A decade on, these comments made in the documentary Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki have come back to haunt him. Now with the new update to OpenAI's ChatGPT, anyone can turn their pictures into the distinct style and nature of Miyazaki and his animation house Studio Ghibli.

It is not hard to see why Studio Ghibli specifically has been targeted for such grave creative robbing. The animation powerhouse, well known for beloved feature-length films like Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro, is supremely idiosyncratic. The quirks and recognisability of its style make it a more straightforward process to replicate, and the studio has a wide enough reaching appeal to achieve the lofty goal of viral meme status in recent days. There is no need to........

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