For the past 48 hours, Ghibli image spin-offs have flooded social media.
While you're busy flaunting your animated self, OpenAI owner Sam Altman is bucking under pressure.
The craze has reached such a fever pitch that the OpenAI CEO himself had to step in and take to X to say, “Can y’all please chill on generating images, this is insane. Our team needs sleep.”
Scenes of ordinary people wandering through lush green fields, anthropomorphic cats sipping tea, and entire cityscapes transformed into whimsical, hand-painted landscapes have taken over feeds at an alarming rate. However, a cursory observation establishes the fact that none of these images were crafted by the legendary Japanese animation house.
"Our GPUs Are Melting”
The demand for AI-generated Ghibli art became so overwhelming that OpenAI had to implement restrictions.
Days before Altman’s plea, he warned users that “our GPUs are melting,” explaining that the company had to introduce temporary rate limits.
“It's super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT. But our GPUs are melting. We are going to temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient. Hopefully won't be long,” he had tweeted.
Yet, the Internet does what it does best. Ignoring restraint.
Even as Altman attempted to slow things down, users kept pushing the boundaries, prompting another exasperated response. When one user suggested OpenAI should simply fire its engineers for failing to keep up.
Altman shot back: "No thanks. In addition to building AGI, this team is on a trajectory to build the biggest website in the world from a cold start 2.33 years ago. The best team in the world. It’s just hard.”
Hayao Miyazaki back in demandUntil last week, many who had never heard of Hayao Miyazaki—Ghibli’s legendary co-founder...were suddenly discussing the nuances of his work. Now, those same users are flooding AI servers with desperate prompts:
“Please make my cat look like he belongs in My Neighbor Totoro.”
“Turn my wedding photos into a Ghibli movie scene.”
“I need my breakfast to look like it was painted by Miyazaki himself.”
Some of the requests veered into the absurd.
A few users reportedly asked ChatGPT to generate "Ghibli-style depictions of global warming," while others wanted historical figures like Napoleon rendered in the soft, painterly pastels of Spirited Away.
ChatGPT, it seems, is exhausted. And so are its human operators.
Ghibli’s “Slow Life” philosophy vs. AI’s instant gratification
Studio Ghibli has long been synonymous with an artistry that embraces slowness.
Miyazaki himself has been vocal about his disdain for AI-generated animation, calling it soulless and mechanical.
His films—like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service—celebrate the beauty of the mundane: a breeze through the trees, a child waiting at a bus stop in the rain, a sleepy village untouched by modernity.
They invite viewers to slow down, to breathe, to watch a single moment unfold with all its delicate details.
And yet, AI-generated Ghibli images now exist in direct opposition to that philosophy. Mass-produced and instant.
A trend too tempting to ignore
Altman has reassured users that free-tier ChatGPT users will soon have access to three image generations per day.
But even with limits, the appeal of AI-crafted Ghibli aesthetics seems unstoppable.
