Note: Before starting, I’d recommend you to listen to Jaanam by Suryakant Sawhney (Lifafa) from Dibakar Banerjee’s Detective Byomkesh Bakshi OST in the background whilst reading.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you might have come across the viral trend of ‘ghiblification’. A new feature in Open AI’s ChatGPT update that turns any picture into a warm, fuzzy animated frame in a style synonymous with the work of a prolific Japanese animator called Hayao Miyazaki.
The aesthetics of his frames have a soft, comforting vibe to them. The characters that are created look so endearing and touching, you find yourself fully involved in the lives of these characters. The detailing is so rich that even the most mundane activities make you pay close attention. A live-action equivalent would make you complain about the ‘lag’ in the film.
His films have dealt with heavy themes like war, depression, environmentalism, dehumanization, death, moral complexities etc. These are all done in such a palatable way.
His work has evoked such an impact that the studio under which he produces his work, and is also the founder of, has its own identity. A Studio Ghibli film brings to mind a certain atmosphere. Something despite the difference in films, and the genres of these, a certain pathos that’s garnered a dedicated fanbase of its own. This is a result of his perfectionist method of crafting his frames through a long, grueling process of development. His latest film ‘The Boy and the Heron’ which won the Oscar for the Best Animated Film of that year took 7 years to develop.
On March 25th, 2025, Chat-GPT rolled out its new update. Its image generation feature that has often been on the receiving end of trolling due to its inefficiency and absurd results that unintentionally end up in fever-dream or nightmare fuel territory was now capable of generating images that were much more improved.
Soon, the internet took to prompting Chat-GPT to take their photographs and generate an animated version of these. Naturally people began asking the AI model to recreate their images as if they were frames from a Studio Ghibli film. The animation style seemed to have striked a chord among people. Soon the term ‘Ghiblify’ took the internet by storm.
All across social media, people began posting cute pictures of ghiblified versions of their photographs. The once soulless and dead-eyes captured by smartphones and cameras now looked earnest and compassionate.
These specific style of frames that Miyazaki would take years to develop, and the quality of which took decades to become iconic, was now being able to be recreated within a matter of minutes.
Now, even the most bigoted person you know has generated a version of themselves that bears a resemblance to the innocence of a Studio Ghibli film character.
Like all things mainstream, the evidently right-wing folks took notice of it and began ‘ghiblifiying’ their problematic history. Someone had ghiblifed the famous picture of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. Someone else seemed to be obsessing over the lack of a janeyu in the ghiblified version of his image with the same precision and perfection that Miyazaki practices. The Ghiblified image of this man without the aforementioned context would have given off the impression of an affable, comfort character in a Studio Ghibli film.
Even the Prime Minister’s ghiblified version looked less like a dictatorial goliath and more like a cute grandpa in a Miyazaki film who will share words of profound wisdom and not “MAGA + MIGA = MEGA”.
Like with all things mainstream, came the backlash. This time rightfully so. Many aspiring, struggling, practicing, successful painters, designers, artists spoke vehemently against this trend. They saw it as an insult to Miyazaki and the artform of drawing itself.
Even the guy who has never drawn anything beyond two suns, a house, and a sun in his school’s drawing book was tweeting about his ‘creation’. A Ghiblified version of his photograph.
Some people who appreciate the art form while not being proficient in it themselves, lend their solidarity by refusing to upload any ghiblifed image of themselves.
I cannot imagine the existential crisis that would burden Miyazaki at the age of 84. Watching his art style which he painstakingly takes years to make, being cheapened, replicated and produced within minutes.
Miyazaki’s work is now more famous than ever. But is this really the kind of fame an artist like him would cherish?
Miyazaki’s comments on AI imagery in 2016 ring true more than ever today. “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
Miyazaki’s comment seems to come out of disgust towards this technology as AI imagery can never reflect the soul of an artist. The pain. The heart that goes into the making of the imagery.
There is something tragically ironic about the fact that an artist whose films have had carefully considered scenes of stillness and quiet experiences of passage of time, which are made so engaging owing to his painstaking effort, is now at the reception of public who are enjoying the experience of generating cheapened imagery of his style within minutes.
The Ghibli art style is not so unique looking anymore to the average person. The fatigue with this trend would soon hit. Miyazaki’s art will now be looked at with lesser curiosity and wonder than before.
Unfortunately for Miyazaki, or the folks at Studio Ghibli, or any of the artists protesting against this trend, the ugly truth is that people seldom care for the struggle behind the art. The backlash against this AI upgrade doesn’t fall to deaf ears, but to apathetic ears.
Taking the example of a country like India. Art has rarely been a matter of thinking to the average person. A third-world country which has everyone in survival mode does not have the privilege to pontificate on art on a general level. Art has barely been able to be seen as anything serious.
In fact, comedians in this country are lynched. Plagiarism is barely regarded as anything worthy of news. In fact when in 2022 the filmmakers behind Kantara had plagiarized a song from an independent band, many were puzzled over the dismay expressed by the band and claimed that the band should consider themselves lucky because such a huge film has taken its song and has made them more famous. In 2017, comedian Abijit Ganguly faced a similar predicament when Kapil Sharma seemingly plagiarized his joke. A section of Kapil Sharma fans deemed that it should rather make a comedian like Abijit Ganguly happy because India’s biggest comedian at that time used his joke and has hence given his joke more exposure.
Despite cinema being a major artform that’s being consumed in this country, the discussions regarding popularity and box office performances have far overshadowed the discourse than engagement with the text on a critical level. People only seem to care about “goosebumps moments” in films. A phrase that seems to be a common trend among the cinephiles of this country and often seems to be a yardstick for the success and popularity of the film.
Anything beyond that is seen as ‘woke’ behavior or ‘over-analyzing’ films. When a powerful medium like cinema that has a history of being used as a tool for propaganda, the public today refuses to look at it as anything beyond entertainment. Films with visuals of gyrating hips, dance-steps which are increasingly looking similar to sexual thrusting, romantic song sequences with alarming age gaps are celebrated as cultural moments in cinema halls. One would imagine that the ‘ghiblification’ is something that’s far from the comprehension of public as something problematic.
Whatever discourse that happens beyond the critical level is often only relegated to technical merit of these films. Hence, you will notice that most of the pan-Indian films are soulless. The themes might be different. But the language is redundant and bares likeliness to the pan-Indian blockbuster that has come a few months ago. That previous film would bear likeliness to the blockbuster before that. Nothing makes me more disinterested in a film than the term ‘pan-Indian’.
Bollywood seems to be a pathetic victim at this. Because in its attempts to recreate success through its MBA style analysis of its successful products, it has killed the industry that had ironically been the artificer of masala filmmaking that permeates most blockbusters today.
This ChatGPT update seems like a no-brainer to a culture like this. You want a drawing of an image, and the AI takes minutes to make. Whereas an artist would take hours, and wants to be paid for it too. Which would be the better alternative for a country that thinks like this?
It was surreal scrolling through my feed and looking at Ghiblified pictures. Also scrolling through stories, tweets, reels and posts about people expressing their dismay over this.
Soon, the rants from artists were overdominated by these Ghiblifed images. There’s barely anyone who gives a fuck about what these artists are suffering through. Who cares about the novelty of it? After all why would anyone care about it when you can create an image that you want within minutes.
The accessibility of AI has made generation of likeness of art much cheaper and magically faster. Miyazaki isn’t the only victim of it. There will be many more to come. AI has made it possible to generate not just images, but even music and writing. What you get with AI is scripts, videos and music generated through formulas that are sampled through the works of successful artists that have dedicated their time and effort to generating them and crafting something that has struck with the audience.
The artist and the context isn’t much of a relevance to the generated AI image or the ‘creator’ of it.
In this ‘attention-economy’ when even a 30 second reel might seem to be a chore to sit through, it is hence rife with extraordinary editing craft and graphics to keep you engaged. Your average content creator can achieve with a 30 second clip what many creatives, especially filmmakers can only hope to achieve in their oeuvre or films spanning over hours.
Today you will come across reels where there are two screens with different things happening within the same reel. Both bearing no contextual similarity or correction to another. You will even come across reels with imagery of a tragic news in one frame, a dancing monkey within another frame, and a Bhojpuri song playing in the background. A caption referencing something you might or might not be aware of. The sheer juxtapositioning of all these things happening within one large frame simultaneously evoke such a mix of emotions that experimental filmmakers can only dream to achieve in their lifetime. These are all a result of virality and bite-sized consumption that has now become as much a part of our regular life as much as snacking and napping is.
A few years ago, one could at least chant the cliche of turning your phone off and living out in the real world. But in the present day even if you do so, everyone else is looking down at their phones and are shifting through trends and cultures faster than you can keep track of things.
In the past few weeks ago, I had gotten too overwhelmed by the disturbing news. The increasingly repetitive nature and brain-rot of the content I was consuming. Coupled with the beautiful soul-sucking nature of my work, I uninstalled my Whatsapp and Instagram to try and preserve some of sanity. In the interim I had come across Uniyal’s Vartmaan and fell in love with the song. It’s a beautiful rap song about how the roots of culture are being smothered by consumerism and cultural ignorance. Interestingly, the hook for this song is taken from an Indian post-modern film with traits like dadaism, pastiche, satire, absurdism and deconstruction as a way to poke fun at the growing hypocrisy, social evils and decaying of Indian culture. In today’s world, these themes can all be covered within the narrative bandwidth of a 30 second reel.
I instantly fell in love with that song and kept playing it on loop. I would rather randomly blurt out the starting lines of the rap song countless times. I began imagining scenes from short films I would never make and feature this song in the background. This dream came to an abrupt end when a friend began randomly singing the starting lines of this song and I jumped with joy, thinking I found someone else who loves this song. His response came with amusement towards me. The song had gone viral on Instagram a few weeks ago. In fact it had become so viral that people are now annoyed by the song.
I installed Instagram and every other reel I had come across had this song featured. It had even prompted a dance trend which originated from another content creator. Now referred to as ‘syncpaglu’ due to the all-encompassing nature of his dance steps which seem to sync well with any random song. Even a Teams ringtone. Or a Samsung phone ringtone.
Many content creators had uploaded reels of them dancing with these steps to Vartmaan. There was even a popular skit about a person going “Vartmaan….aankhon ka dokha hain” randomly at different parts of the day. Many users found it relatable and hence it had amassed millions of views.
So, what I thought was just a quirk limited to just me was now a trend of the past few weeks. I had lived through the short lifespan of this trend without even becoming aware that it had been a trend. Come to think of it, the reason the song featured in my Youtube suggestions is probably because the song had gotten viral on Instagram.
“Mere Dimaag Mein Kya Hai. Meri Maa Nahi Jaanti. Mere Phone Ko Pata Hai. Kal Raat Saadhe Nau Baje Teen Roti Khayi. Ye Elon Ko Pata Hai.”
Verses from Vartmaan which hint at the dangerous hold of social media in our lives and how they dictate the culture and the world that we live in. The grasp of social media on the artist is so strong that his Mom doesn’t know what’s running through his mind, but his phone does.
The song got viral when an attractive influencer uploaded a clip of herself lipsyncing to that song. The original video of this clip has over 33 million views. The re-uploaded version also has amassed millions of views in other accounts. The influencer earned lakhs of followers after this. The ‘syncpaglu’ dancer (Parveen Kumar) has close to 2 lakh followers and easily millions of views across various meme pages.
Meanwhile, the artist of the song barely has 50 thousand followers. No one cares who the artist is, except artists or enthusiasts themselves. The song’s identity has gotten more synonymous with a viral dance trend and the influencer who made the song viral.
It is no longer a beautifully sampled rap song about the growing post-modernist, post-post-post society but an annoying song with an annoying dance trend.
Similarly, the Ghibli trend will soon die down and the public will move to some new AI feature. A new song. A new blockbuster. A new meme. Whilst numbing themselves to the gradual decay of any semblance of culture. Big corporates and advertisement agencies have resorted to regurgitating the memes that trend on social media and juxtapose them next to celebrities whose allure still hasn’t been eaten up by the banalification of social media. Like the ad with Gukesh throwing words like ‘skibidi’. Or Dhoni recreating scenes from the controversial 2023 film called Animal.
This juxtapositioning seems to be the new formula for virality. We are yet to see how quick this will die down too.
Beneath all this, the bitter reality is that any semblance or authenticity is effectively being dumbed down. Or cheapened by big corporations and the increasingly numbed audience that is comfortable with living a contextless consumption of art. We live for those 30 second distractions, at the end of the day. Because what else is there to look forward to?
The person sitting before you will never be as interesting as the hundred thousand distractions on your phone. Or the images of people that permeate your social media apps.
Next time, you meet someone take notice of how many times people pull out a phone to scroll aimlessly mid conversation. Or have a dual engagement by half being involved in what you say and half being involved in their phone.
I can assure you, it’s going to be difficult. The bitter truth is that the constant barrage of emotions that hit us through social media has blinded us towards engagement towards anything on a deeper level, and this has resulted in us becoming an increasingly superficial and perenially distracted public. This also makes you want to question things as an artist – does this audience really even deserve to engage with what I put my heart and soul into making?
If you do find someone who chooses to give you their undivided attention, and engages with you on a deeper level. Keep them close.
If you have managed to read till here, I am deeply grateful to you for allowing me to capture the patience of your mind, and your kindness in engaging with what I just wrote.
And if you listened to the song while reading this, and wondered what’s the meaning of coupling a song like Jaanam with a text like this? There is no meaning. It’s contextless consumption.
It’s a nice song, it has a nice vibe too it. And I was listening to it when I got the inspiration to write out this rant.
Thanks for reading.
A notebook. 