Recently, in late March 2025, the social media platform was fired with tons of animated photos created with Openai’s image generators powered by the new GPT-40. What’s interesting is that everything has the same unique style as Ghibli, Japan’s most popular studio. With its soft colors, adorable paintings and charming style, Ghibli’s aesthetic has long captivated the hearts of society. Classic animated films like “Spirited Away,” which won the Oscar for best animation features in 2003, or films like “My Neighbor Totoro,” are because legendary Miyazaki Hayao’s unique animation style was a trademark long before artificial intelligence (AI) was established. This trend is called “giblication” because it personalized Ghibli style photos. It sparked a variety of social responses and discourses as people were concerned about the copyright and ethical use of style.
There are two aspects of the coin to reflect the fuss. They are pessimists and opportunists. Pessimists tend to argue sarcasm when using AI tools to create art. This intersects with ethical and philosophical debates. On the other hand, opportunists believe that this tool can provide a greater platform for invasion and growth of the creative industry. There is no legal law regulating this area, so there is no right decision-making. So is this trend really a nightmare or a teacup storm? This essay would argue that the trends in Ghiblication with generative AI represent the form of cultural and technological colonialism that erodes artistic values and how it exacerbates global economic inequality.
Market impact
In response to Ghiblifis’ burgeoning popularity, the digital market has spilled quite heavily with Solana-based Meme Coin, named “Ghibli,” spilling to a market capitalization of $208.3 million (Gladwin, 2025). Solana itself is a blockchain platform, but Meme Coin is a very popular trend in cryptocurrency. At least 20 other Ghibli-related tokens appeared, one recorded a jump of 52.54%, reaching a market capitalization of $23 million (Aziz, 2025). Many investors and traders are focusing on this particular coin because of this trend. Create new opportunities for more subtle platforms and investments.
It sounds fun to code fanatics, but this positive disruption didn’t have the same impact on the creative industry. Market owners keep an eye on the value of the coin, but not the art itself. And this is where the “market” came across at a crossroads. For who is the market working in the business or creative industry?
Who owns the profit?
In fact, it’s easy to see who will benefit from this trend in giving. Studio Ghibli itself didn’t even get a penny profit. All generated images exploited from Openai are defensive and will only benefit the company. There are no copyright licenses or regulations prohibiting it. According to intellectual property lawyer Evan Brown, these tools exist in the “legal gray realm.” In other words, it did not technically violate copyright law because “style is not explicitly protected by copyright.” It’s true, openai works with a huge dataset of images born from the characteristics of Ghibli. They are trained to enter the system following various images. This actually means “stealing” previous art as a muse and programming it for entertainment. In a 2024 article, “AI Art is theft, Labor, Extraction, and Exploitation: Or the dangers of stochastic Pollock, author Goetze argued that there are three concepts of ART theft, which are primarily used by protesters: robbery, plagiarism, and labour theft. Using John Locke’s explanation of creative labor, AI image generators are involved in large, morally undesirable theft rooted in the appropriation of a vast number of existing artwork. Simply put, “theft” means taking the product of labour (ART) without providing compensation to workers. It erodes the rights of Ghibli artists in order to receive what they deserve as rewards. AI creates distributive injustice in both material resources and the foundation of self-esteem, exacerbating the excesses of colonialism and capitalism.
Not only did tech companies steal profits, they also stole gratitude by developing “great” latest AI tools. Leave your money alone. This is the greatest humiliation for art workers due to lack of gratitude and awareness of their art. Even if a large part of society loves style, they will increase the demand for creating more “art” in the AI itself, not the Ghibli staff. Ultimately, the profit cycle continued to circumvent high-tech companies, failing to work with some segments of society that recognize the rights of artworkers.
AI colonialism?
Let’s find out who bagged profits from the trends in the Giverication and take a look at the bigger, more subtle pictures of the future. The vast resources and financial barriers needed to enter the market have shifted the AI industry to Broligarky (the government is dominated by the very wealthy male compatriots of technology companies, also known as high-tech ligarchy). There are only industry leaders climbing the ladder of AI growth, namely famous leaders such as Meta, Open, Google Deep Mind, and Microsoft. With high barriers to entry and market competition, it is impossible to establish your own AI company without merging or seeking help from large companies. Not only companies, but countries are also lined up within the race of AI development. According to Stanford High’s Global Vibrant Tool, the top 10 global AI leaders of 2024 are primarily from the Global North, with the US number one, followed by China and the UK. This centralisation of development would potentially put an erosion of diversity in global cultural identity at risk. With only a small number of industry leaders, there is a potential worsening of digital disparities and the reshaping of social norms and cultural values, supporting their perspectives (Dobrin, 2024). It leads to technical colonialism, or specifically colonialism.
So how could this be linear in the trend of Giverisation? All hell will loosen if there are no restrictions, no restrictions on who and how to use it. Let’s take a look at an example of a user IDF or an Israeli Defense Force post.
Everything may seem normal, but the problem is false values and the cultural appropriation behind it. X user @/goodvibepolitik cited the above post, saying, “I have to imagine Miyazaki Hayo not accepting Oscar in 2003 to accept Oscar for his opposition to the Iraq War, so we must imagine him being furious to see the slaughtered occupational army to promote himself using the Gibliart style.” The creator of the style itself shows that it is against the atrocities committed by the war. When his style is used to promote “cute” photos of evil soldiers, it is where we draw the line. A single Ghibli drawing has layers of cultural meaning and emotional depth. When used to generate possible images, their values decrease and are not called “art.” Generating photos with AI does not require empathy for the subject or a deeper understanding of the context. It simply identifies the aesthetic and generates it as an empty symbol. AI plunders the values and meanings of the arts and cultural contexts represented by Studio Ghibli. It is a form of colonialism.
Technology contributes to the glorification of artwork in modernity (Benjamin, 1935). The technological reproduction of Ghibli’s works through art has been separated from the realm of tradition. The soulless, meaningless photography known as “art” has become a new modern aesthetic tied to AI algorithms. If it only serves the benefits of some major AI industries aiming for greater intrusions and revenue. There is no major blow to the creative industry or compassion for the cultural representations behind a single drawing. It will settle the value, meaning, context, and even history of Studio Ghibli as a whole, reducing it to a minute or more AI-generated image tool. X posting by IDF is just one of the latest examples. AI continues to evolve rapidly and cannot stop it, so we can only predict bigger nightmares for the creative industry in the future.
Conclusion (1)
For the general public, this tendency may just be interesting and fleeting events. But what most of us lack is the potential harm that may leak into the future. Understanding the context is wrong when the fly-off is not considered a problem. If this continues and develops unregulated, what is lost is not only the preservation of the value of the work, but also the loss of gratitude for the position of workers in the creative industry. It’s like the way collective ideas create new norms and actions in society. As the world begins to normalize its trends in speech creativity, the next thing is “AI art.”
Crypto Market trends pave the way for Brolicach to take advantage of this opportunity for the exploitation of more generative images in the future. Allowing data colonialism to internalize more authentic styles into generated images promotes art theft and is very concerned about the future. It threatens to erode artistic value and theft of labor, as believed by Locke’s argument. AI developers have no right to use these products in AI Development in AI Development (Goetze, 2024).
When it comes to the discussion of AI, the pendulum always shakes ethics and regulations. Society has walked on tightrope walking to find his “right foot.” There were no clear ratified international regulations or ethical restrictions to ban people from using generated AI. But one thing is certain, while only large companies and the AI industry benefit from all this, it is slowly eroding the global creative industry. If the world continues like this, the storm really will run out of the teacup.
