Timelines go Ghibli-crazy as latest OpenAI tool sets Miyazaki's vision loose on the world

OpenAI's latest image generation tool sparked a viral trend of Studio Ghibli-style renderings, flooding social media with cartoons of pets, families, and famous landmarks or events reflecting the work of legendary auteur and animator Hayao Miyazaki-only for the AI company to restrict access to Plus and Pro subscribers, within 24 hours.

- Vishal Mathur

By Wednesday night, social media timelines had transformed into vibrant galleries of whimsical imagery as users rushed to experiment with OpenAI's newest image generation capabilities.

By Thursday, many users found their creative endeavors met with rejection messages.

OpenAI had begun blocking requests from ChatGPT accounts which were still on the free tier for images in the "style of Ghibli" and some other artists-a swift response to concerns about creative rights that demonstrated the precarious balance between innovation and ethical responsibility in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

The viral sensation highlighted a significant evolution for ChatGPT as it competes in the increasingly crowded AI chatbot market. Image generation isn't unique to OpenAI's offering competitors such as XAI's Grok and Google Gemini already feature similar capabilities - but the quality and precision of GPT-40's creations potentially set a benchmark that was evident by how popular it became.

"GPT-40 image generation excels at accurately rendering text, precisely following prompts, and leveraging 40's inherent knowledge base and chat context-including transforming uploaded images or using them as visual inspiration," OpenAI said in its update documentation.