"Insult To Life Itself": Ghibli Founder Hayao Miyazaki On AI-Generated Art

If you have been active on social media, particularly X, in the last 24 hours, it may give you the impression that it's a Studio Ghibli world, and we are living in it. It all has come about, courtesy of OpenAI's latest image-generation update on ChatGPT.

And while people reimagine themselves in the Studio Ghibli world, an old video of its co-founder Hayao Miyazaki saying AI-generated animation was an "insult to life itself" is going viral.

Since this utter garbage is trending, we should take a look at what Hayao Miyazaki, the founder of Studio Ghibli, said about machine created art. https://t.co/1TMPcFGIJE pic.twitter.com/IvaM9WZL3T

— Nuberodesign (@nuberodesign) March 26, 2025

In the old clip, the renowned filmmaker, known for masterpieces such as Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro, expressed his views on AI, saying it would not understand the real feelings of humans.

The video shows a group of animators and designers presenting Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki and Mr Miyazaki with their "creation" of an AI machine that can animate images. 

The animated image looked like a horrific zombie, and they explained that AI could come up with strange, unnatural movements beyond what humans can imagine.

The presenter stated, "It looks like it's dancing. It's moving by using its head. It doesn't feel any pain and has no concept of protecting its head. It uses its head like a leg. This movement is so creepy and could be applied to a zombie video game. Artificial intelligence could present us with grotesque movements that we humans can't imagine."

Unimpressed by the explanation and the animated image, Mr Miyazaki said he had a friend with a disability who struggled with easy movements such as giving a high five because of stiff muscles. He further said that this animated image of unnatural movements reminded him of his friend's struggle, which is not entertaining.

Mr Miyazaki told FarOut Magazine, "I can't watch this stuff and find [it] interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all."

He further said, "I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."

Explaining his presentation, the designer said, "This is just our experiment and we don't intend to do anything by showing it to the world."

Toshio Suzuki also asked the team about their aim. One of them replied they wanted to build a machine that could draw pictures like humans do.

ChatGPT's latest model, GPT4o, which comes with an integrated image generator has taken social media by storm, with people creating and being in awe of never-seen-before Ghibli-inspired artwork.  It's been such a hit among users that even Open AI CEO Sam Altman changed his profile picture to an AI-generated Ghibli-style version.