Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently changed his profile picture on ‘X’ to a Ghibli-style AI-generated image, casually noting, “Maybe someone will make me a better one.” This sparked a viral trend as ChatGPT users flooded social media with their own Ghibli-inspired creations. From movie scenes to childhood memories, almost everything is being “Ghibli-fied,” thanks to OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, which enables high-quality AI image generation.

OpenAI presented the feature as a multimodal AI breakthrough, which can perform accurate, photorealistic image generation. Anyone can simply ask the AI to convert any picture into a Studio Ghibli-style drawing, and it is a trend universally accepted.

While fans are celebrating the whimsical artwork, legendary Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki is still not impressed by the use of AI-generated graphics. An earlier statement of his described AI animation as “utterly disgusting,” indicating his disapproval. Despite this, the trend keeps gaining popularity, with users eagerly converting favorite scenes into ethereal, hand-drawn Ghibli-inspired art.