In late March, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, announced that the company’s primary AI platform, ChatGPT, was now able to create high-quality images with its new version, GPT-4o. Shortly after this announcement, a software engineer in Seattle used this new feature to transform a family photo into the style of Studio Ghibli films like Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. This quickly became a viral trend, with Altman and other OpenAI staff sharing Ghibli-style images.
As users flocked to OpenAI’s servers to create these images, the platform saw a surge of a million new users within an hour, eventually surpassing 150 million users. By March 27, the White House, the Israel Defense Forces, and India’s civic engagement platform had all joined the trend of sharing Ghibli-style propaganda. However, all users participating in this trend, whether knowingly or not, were contributing to propaganda.
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While the term „propaganda“ often brings to mind images from the past, propaganda in the modern age operates differently. According to political scientist Dmitry Chernobrov, in the era of social media, the public plays a role in spreading messages from elites, making the manipulative intent less clear and the original source obscured. Similarly, artist Jonas Staal noted in his book „Propaganda Art in the 21st Century“ that propaganda aims to shape a new normative reality that serves the interests of elite power, regardless of the political system in place.
While transforming a family photo into the style of a Hayao Miyazaki film may seem harmless, it takes on a different tone when used for propaganda purposes. Both innocent and sinister images can be a form of messaging to manipulate consent, raising questions about the true intentions behind these messages.
Since AI image generators were released to the public in 2022, companies like OpenAI, Midjourney, and Stability AI have faced criticism. These models were trained on images scraped from the internet without creators‘ consent or compensation, leading to legal challenges from artists for copyright infringement. Despite these legal battles, artists continue to advocate for a boycott of AI technology.
By participating in the Ghibli image trend, users are inadvertently supporting the defanging of AI technology. Each transformed image normalizes AI’s ability to appropriate aesthetics and associations without consent. This participatory propaganda helps companies like OpenAI win public opinion battles without users fully understanding the implications. The use of Miyazaki’s style in AI technology further blurs the lines between art, consent, and commercial interests.
Miyazaki’s work and aesthetic have been leveraged for various purposes, some of which contradict his anti-war and anti-fascist beliefs. His films are deeply rooted in humanist politics and themes of environmentalism, resistance to war, and care for others. The use of his style for propaganda goes against the values and messages he has conveyed throughout his career.
Miyazaki lädt uns in eine Welt ein, in der die Stärke des Charakters genauso wunderbar ist wie jeder epische Flug oder jeder magische Blitz.