Studio Ghibli: The Dark Side of AI-Powered Creativity

The most recent trend online nowadays is converting personal photos into Ghibli-style art using generative artificial intelligence tools.

- Dr. Niteesh K. Upadhyay and Mahak Rathee

This trend is famous not just among youngsters and students but also among people from all walks of life, including CEOs of companies, housewives, and working-class people. No class is untouched by this trend, and honestly, the results of the art are also very fascinating, including some conversions leading to mistakes because of the black box syndrome of artificial intelligence tools.

Cyber experts say that this trend may lead to unforeseen privacy breaches and data misuse because while converting a picture to Studio Ghibli-style art, one does not only share his photos but also shares various metadata like location, timestamps, and device details, which can be used to find the identity of the person, including personal information. Imagine a situation where an AI device that works on feature learning is asked to find a person and, using the metadata, can find that person. Is having these cute images worth taking the risk of privacy and personal information breaches?