Why did X Go Nuts Over Studio Ghibli Photos?

Are you tired of AI news? Well regardless of how you feel, AI news isn’t done with you yet. If you’ve been on X/Twitter in the last week of March 2025, your feed’s likely been inundated with memes in the Studio Ghibli art style. How did this happen and why? Simple answer, it’s good-looking and impressive because anyone can do it.

How did this happen?

It all began when OpenAI released its new 4o Image generation model on March 25, 2025. Users were quick to point out just how good their new image generation model was at recognizing context and text. Everyone began to post

That is until Grant Slatton accidentally unleashed Pandora’s box. You’d think maybe he was being malicious but no, all he did was share that you could use ChatGPT to convert your photos to the adorable Studio Ghibli art style and send it to your wife.

People began to reply and post pictures of themselves with their spouses or girlfriends showing how well the AI model did making the pictures look perfectly “Ghibli style” and how much their significant others loved it.

Being uniquely pleasing to the eye, Studio Ghibli’s iconic art style was the perfect prompt to get everyone on board with how incredible the technology was.

Something about seeing yourself or iconic scenes in the iconic warm color palettes and rounded characters with expressive characters struck a chord with everybody. And unlike when you normally see something exceptional, everybody had the ability to to go to ChatGPT and try it themselves.

Viral moment

As you might imagine, one someone started, the internet promptly got to work converting every meme they could think of just to see what it would look like.

It wasn’t long before the internet stopped converting personal pictures and started seeing if other photos worked. Meme formats specifically. And lo and behold, everybody realized that the model would output any meme quite perfectly.

Quick to embrace a win, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman also jumped onto the bandwagon and changed his own profile picture to a Ghiblified version of him.

At one point, even the person in charge of the White House’s X account jumped on the band wagon leading to quite a bit of controversy as you might imagine, not everyone thinks it’s proper for an official account to be making memes about serious events.

https://t.co/PVdINmsHXs pic.twitter.com/Bw5YUCI2xL

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 27, 2025

It got so bad that Grant felt bad and apologized for unleashing Ghiblification onto the timeline.

Note to devs

Ever the oportunists, devs and hobbyists will undoubtedly be making their own apps and tools that will “ghiblify” or “turn into an anime pic” whatever photo you feed it once the API is available. Think what you will, but now you’ll know what event caused this flood of photo transforming apps.

On a sidenote, if you are to make an AI wrapper, do not use “Ghibli style”, “Studio Ghibli art style” or make any references to their characters in your promotional material. Though their iconic art style is fair use, their company’s trademark name and characters are not. They can and will litigate to protect their intellectual property as they should. You have been forewarned so whatever happens to you is on you at this point.

The great irony

For all the love that people have given the art style (for better or worse), using AI to “ghiblify” everything, Studio Ghibli’s co-founder Hayao Miyazaki doesn’t see it the same way.

To him, it’s a disgusting affront to life itself. He’s stated that it could lead to a loss of human creativity and the devaluation of traditional animation techniques. He’s mentioned that AI-generated content lacks the “soul” of human-created work.

Closing thoughts

At the end of the day, it’s all fun and games to the internet. Unfortunately this is exactly what Hayao Miyazaki hates but it’s a way for your average user to appreciate art and send it to friends and family. Nobody that’s generating the art on ChatGPT would have hired an artist to redraw a family photo for laughs.

Artists are mad, very mad at this. They should be, it’s their livelihood at stake. But you know whether or not you’re trying to do something professionally and memes are certainly not worth an artist commission.

I won’t sit here and lecture or comment about AI ethics because the truth is companies will use it to improve margins if possible and whether or not you make a few memes isn’t gonna change that. Try a couple if you’re curious, have some fun. Maybe the end times are here, probably not. Either way, it’s ok to enjoy life and appreciate art once in a while, even if the art is made by a machine.

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