Vulgar Display of Power

Hayao Miyasaki is the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation studio known worldwide for their stunning, emotional, beautiful stories and movies. At the core of Studio Ghibli’s work is a deep engagement with questions of humanity. About what it means to be a human, about how to care for one another and the world around us. But also about the levels of cruelty that humanity can be capable of – and how there still are grace and love even under those conditions. Studio Ghibli’s work is distinct. In the level of quality over the years, in their very recognisable art style.

Hayao Miyasaki also is know for his reaction to a few technologists showing him something we’d call “AI” today to generate “creepy” moving figures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc

His reaction to the proud developers showing an animation of a thing using its head to move forward claiming “Artificial intelligence could present us grotesque movements that we humans can’t imagine.” is very telling:

“Every morning, not in recent days, I see my friend who has a disability. It’s so hard for him just to do a high five; his arm with stiff muscle can’t reach out to my hand. Now, thinking of him, I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is.

I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it, but I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”

Hayao Miyazaki

He capped that off with a scathing remark about what had happened:

“I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves.”

Hayao Miyazaki

Now of course he wasn’t looking at modern “AI” systems like the ones Microsoft/OpenAI/Anthropic/etc. are trying (with little economic success) to sell. But his argument would apply just the same: “Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is.” Or joy. Or love. Or hunger. Or longing. Or need. Or want. All the parts of us that define our humanity and our way of interacting with the world. The things that make us care, that push us towards doing something, finding something out. Saying something and hearing something.

For the longest time OpenAI’s systems would try to block people from generating images in the style of certain artists. This was obviously for copyright reasons, the didn’t want to get sued (even more than they already are). Which is something they just changed very explicitly. You can now easily generate stuff in the style of Studio Ghibli and Sam Altman made his avatar on X-The Nazi Network a ghiblified version of himself.

And I think that on one level David Gerard is right framing it as a distraction from their money problems:

This means OpenAI has to make more and more announcements so they look to the investors like they’re still cool and interesting. Any old garbage will do, like a literary fiction writer bot or something.

David Gerard

But I do think it does go further. There is a reason they chose Studio Ghibli. Sure, its style is very cute, very distinct, but that is not the whole story. It’s not that they just picked something cute and accidentally the co-founder of that studio hates their whole approach from the bottom of its heart. OpenAI picked Studio Ghibli because Miyazaki hates their approach.

It is a display of power: You as an artist, an animator, an illustrator, a writer, any creative person are powerless. We will take what we want and do what we want. Because we can.

Because we can. This is the idea of might makes right. The banner that every totalitarian and fascist government rallied under. OpenAI luckily is no government but their ideas, their thinking has influenced many current governments all over the planet. “If we are not allowed to take everything we want without payment and against people’s will, we will never create the machine god to solve all our problems.”

OpenAI’s move is an attempt to see what the reaction to them explicitly, willingly, gleefully breaching another boundary, acting against the explicit and known will of the people they use their machines on. And many in the public seem to eat it up, turning their holiday pics into “Ghibli-style” images.

The scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder (who just left his position at Yale University going to Toronto in a very non-subtle reaction to growing Fascism in the US) write his book “On Tyranny” to give people 20 lessons about how to react to and resist tyrannical movements. The first rule is: “Do not obey in advance.“

This is what many are doing here. Submitting to this logic of injustice and domination in advance. Because it plays well on Instagram or because “it’s just pictures”. But this is submission to a logic of dominance by those who have power. It is a submission of democratic rights and understandings. It is a submission to a vulgar display of power.

And that is why the White House used that tech to [content warning about the following link: It’s a obscene display of violence] illustrate their cruelty against migrants. The cruelty is the point. But so are the other forms of violence displayed.

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