In the past week, I’ve heard some wild theories in response to my copyright analysis of ChatGPT’s ability to recreate Studio-Ghibli styled characters and images.
Theory no. 1: sam altman is gaslighting us with the controversy over chatgpt’s ability to produce studio ghibli-style images
The first theory is Sam Altman loves all the controversy over potential copyright infringement involving the flood of ChatGPT generated images depicting characters and scenes similar to the distinctive style of Studio Ghibli. According to Theory No. 1, Altman is gaslighting us with copyright controversies.
Not only did he change his profile photo on X to a Ghibli-style character of himself, he’s been constantly posting ChatGPT-created Ghibli style images on his X feed, including:
If this controversy is all for PR, it seems to have worked. Altman said they got 1 million new users in 1 hour!
The hullabaloo over ChatGPT’s Ghibli-generation of images drowned out the news of Google’s launch of Gemini Pro 2.5 Pro Experimental on the same day OpenAI launched its new image generator.
And we can’t forget that Sam Altman seemed to invite another IP controversy when OpenAI previewed its ChatGPT voice with a demo that had a voice eerily similar to Scarlett Johansson, who played the voice of the AI character Sam in the movie Her.
Not coincidentally, Atlman tweeted “her” during the launch. And now you can see the same tweet with his Ghibli-fied profile pic:
While wild, Theory No. 1 seems at least plausible.
Theory No. 2: openai has already struck a secret licensing deal with studio ghibli
Theory No. 2 is way wilder than No. 1, but one that seems incredibly unlikely, if not outright preposterous.
Theory No. 2 is that OpenAI already has some secret licensing deal in place with Studio Ghibli, so it has no worry about exposing itself to a new copyright infringement lawsuit. But the controversy over copyright infringement has generated, no pun intended, great PR for OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The fact that I’ve fielded interviews from outlets in France and Japan provides evidence of the “good for PR” angle. But I find it super improbable that Studio Ghibli would even consider entering into any licensing deal with an AI company or risk alienating its legion of fans around the world.
Until the Studio issues a statement or takes some action or position on the matter, we won’t know for sure. But Theory No. 1 seems the more viable theory of the two.
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