As usual, Miyazaki doesn’t have time for anything that runs counter to his artistic principles.
Almost as soon as generative AI image-making applications became something that the public had easy access to,“Ghibli-style AI illustrations” started getting shoveled into online spaces. Longtime fans of Ghibli that appreciate the studio’s human ethos in making art ground their teeth in frustration, while unconcerned technophiles were happy to have a way to avoid the thought and effort involved in the creative process and skip right to having a free facsimile of the basest elements of Ghibli aesthetics.
Studio Ghibli itself was pretty quiet on the whole subject, but company cofounder and longtime anime film producer Toshio Suzuki recently shared his thoughts on the use of AI to copy the Ghibli art style, and, in a sense, also shared how fellow Ghibli co-founder and director Hayao Miyazaki feels about it.
“When [Ghibli-style AI images] first started showing up online, I got asked about it a lot,” says Suzuki. “But I figured everyone would get tired of them pretty quickly. Sure enough, that’s what’s happened.”
Whether the loss of interest is quite as universal as Suzuki says could be debated, but postings of Ghibli-style AI images do seem to grab less attention these days. The ability of AI to generate images is no longer a novelty in and of itself, the obvious aping of the Ghibli house style rubs many of the more passionate fans of the studio the wrong way. But with AI capabilities continuing to advance, is Suzuki worried about it being used to create not just still images, but animation as well?
Not particularly. “AI can create certain types of animation, but people with a moderate amount of intelligence can see right through it. There’s not really much point to it. It’s not interesting or compelling.”
OK, so Suzuki clearly isn’t impressed or worried about generative AI. How, though, does Miyazaki, someone equally famous for his creative and curmudgeonly sensitivities, feel? Suzuki says“Miya-san doesn’t know what generative AI is in the first place.”
That might be a bit of a hyperbole on Suzuki’s part. At the very least, from a linguistic standpoint, “generative AI” is pretty straightforward, and despite his luddite leanings, Miyazaki must at least be aware that computers can now be used to generate images, so Suzuki’s comment might be a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that the director has such little interest in generative AI that he has no knowledge of it beyond the basic concept. Whether Suzuki is speaking literally or not, though, it’s clear that Miyazaki, as is so often the case, doesn’t really care what the rest of the industry is doing, and is as committed as ever to making his art his way.
It’s worth taking into consideration that Studio Ghibli, and Miyazaki in particular, enjoy a very unique position within the anime industry, and the entertainment industry as a whole, for that matter. Their unparalleled consistency in creating movies that are both critical and commercial successes mean that Ghibli can take all the time it wants to make its anime, and the involvement of Miyazaki is likely the only collateral needed to secure financial backing. Ghibli’s track record and prestige also mean that it can attract Japan’s top animator talent whenever it needs to gear up for a new project. Studios and directors whose resumes aren’t filled with modern classics, on the other hand, probably feel much more intense deadline and budget pressures, and thus stronger temptations from the presumed cost and time savings of AI, even if artistic quality suffers as a result.
Ghibli, though, has the option to quietly ignore generative AI, and Suzuki says that even if it becomes more prevalent in the industry, Ghibli will still be there as an example of the cultural value that can only come from human-made art.
