You Are Spring

I reactivated my Twitter account after 10 days only to be greeted by the absolute disrespect towards art all over my timeline. There was an influx of people using ChatGPT to generate Studio Ghibli-esque versions of their pictures. 

Why does this suck?

Using Gen AI for ‘art’ does not make you an artist because you are not creating anything. All you are doing is replicating the information and knowledge that has already been fed to the Gen AI model. Creating art is how humans express themselves. You cannot express, reflect, or translate your emotions in art that is generated.

For Ghibli, specifically, all of us are aware of the depth of hardwork and detail that Miyazaki and other Ghibli artists and animators put into the films. To have developed an art style that is instantly recognisable and distinct does not happen overnight. It certainly does not happen in less than a few seconds. While this is all over Twitter, I want to mention the four to five seconds long scene of a crowd in The Wind Rises. The scene took Eiji Yamamori 15 months to draw and animate. Do you seriously think Gen AI will ever come close to that? And if you think it will, then you have wandered quite far away from the ethical and moral implications of this.

“I’m doing it for fun,” Please stop

Not every trend is worth jumping on the bandwagon for. Indulge in some media literacy. If you have never watched a Ghibli film or if you have never heard of Miyazaki, stay away. If you have, you know better than to disrespect him, his work, and everything that they stand for. You cannot commit or devote yourself to an art form — your attention span does not allow you to do so. So, instead, you do something to get a laugh out of it, something that soothes your screaming need for instant validation.

Amidst all of this, you have forgotten what ethics are, what true appreciation for art means, what it means for a person to put their love and labour into a piece of art. All of this is much, much worse if you have ever laid eyes on a Ghibli film.

Nature and Ghibli

Nature is always depicted intricately, with sincerity, and poignant detail in Ghibli films. This reflects Miyazaki’s deep connection with the natural world and his respect for it. His films will move you to ponder the effects of consumerism, capitalism, and humans’ effects on the environment. If all you take away from these films is how pretty they look and that is what you want to recreate, then you have never really watched a Ghibli film.

This is also how people, especially Indians, treat artists like Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Claude Monet, and, to my much dismay, Edward Hopper (I recently saw a store selling tote bags with his paintings on them). These individuals do not admire their art, story, or artist. Everything is about what is trending, the latest thing you can make content out of, and how you can project the image of an intellectual through materialism.

Disclaimer

I use ChatGPT for work, mostly to get ideas for social media posts. I am not, nor am I telling you to, ride a high horse. But the least you can do is think critically, educate yourself, experience art in its true, raw essence, and not blindly follow everyone and everything you see.

Anyway, watch this documentary.