Actress-filmmaker Zelda Williams, daughter of the late actor Robin Williams, has slammed the latest Ghibli trend on social media platforms, pointing out the dangers of AI and Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki’s distaste for machine-made animation.

“People are gleefully sharing ‘Studio Ghibli style’ AI memes and photos, as though the man himself wouldn’t absolutely despise the technological piracy and negative effects on our environment,” the 35-year-old wrote on her Instagram stories days after the AI-generated pictures in Ghibli-style took the internet by storm.

“Anyway, go watch Princess Mononoke in theatres tonight, and f*** AI,” she added.

Miyazaki’s 1997 classic Princess Mononoke was re-released in US theatres in 4K restoration format on Thursday amid the Ghibli craze online.

Earlier this week, ChatGPT launched its latest model GPT4o, which lets free, Plus and Pro users to generate high-quality pictures in Ghibli’s signature style with the help of a single prompt. This led to a meme fest online with users reimagining their favourite moments in the dreamy, hand-painted fashion of Ghibli films.

Studio Ghibli, known for its quiet, contemplative and hand-drawn animation, was launched by Oscar-winning filmmaker Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Tokuma Shoten back in 1985.

In an interview with NHK back in 2016, Miyazaki, the Japanese filmmaker behind masterpieces such as Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and his most recent The Boy and the Heron, had said that he never wishes to incorporate AI into his work, calling machine-made artworks an “insult to life”.

On Friday, Zelda critiqued the latest trend, saying that she is baffled by people turning a blind eye to the horrors of AI. “The amount of 'get used to it', 'it's fun', 'stop whining' that I see in response to anti AI sentiments is wild,” the actress, who featured alongside Robin Williams in the 2004 comedy-drama House of D, wrote.

“I can’t stop you from using the stupid, water wasting s—ty facsimile machines, in the same way you can’t stop me from talking about how deeply empty life will become if we regulate the pursuit of art or knowledge to a machine because some people don’t like the effort of learning, whether that’s an artistic skill or homework in school,” she noted.

“(R)emember that science fiction has warned us for decades how easily mankind would slide into lukewarm, lobotomized stasis, if given half the chance,” she signed off.