March 27th.ChatGPT renewed AI Image GeneratorJust one day after going live, social media is already flooded withKiplingStudio style AI-generated terrier drawings. Studio Ghibli is the beloved Japanese animation studio that has produced hit movies like Totoro and A Thousand and One.
Over the past 24 hours, numerous Ghibli-style AI-created images have appeared on the web, including images of Elon Musk, Lord of the Rings, and Donald Trump. openAI CEO Sam Altman has even swapped out his new avatar for a Ghibli-style image, possibly created through the GPT-4o native image generator. Users can upload existing images to ChatGPT and ask the chatbot to recreate them in the new style.
This rekindles the central question surrounding several lawsuits facing developers of generative AI models: if these companies use thecopyrightDoes training on a work constitute copyright infringement?
According to Evan Brown, an intellectual property attorney with the law firm Neal & McDevitt, products like the GPT-4o Native Image Generator are in a legal gray area today. Brown says that the style itself is not explicitly protected by copyright, which means that OpenAI doesn't appear to be violating the law simply by generating images that resemble the style of a Ghibli movie. However, Brown also points out that OpenAI may have achieved this similarity by having its model learn millions of frames from Ghibli movies. Even so.Several courts are still deciding whether the use of copyrighted works to train AI models falls under fair use protection.
"I think it goes back to what we've been thinking about for the last couple of years," Brown said in an interview, "what are the copyright infringement implications of crawling the web and copying information into databases for use in training AI models without permission? "
1AI notes that The New York Times and several publishers are currently filing a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of using copyrighted works to train its AI models without proper attribution or payment. Other leading AI companies, including Meta and AI image generation startup Midjourney, are facing similar lawsuits.
In a statement to TechCrunch, OpenAI said that while ChatGPT refuses to replicate the "styles of living individual artists," it does allow for replication of a "broader range of studio styles. Of course, it's worth noting that some living artists are credited with pioneering their studio's unique style, such as Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki.
For now, OpenAI and Google's new imaging features are making significant strides in AI model generation capabilities, which seems to be driving a surge in usage. OpenAI delayed the rollout of its new imaging tools to free users on Wednesday due to overwhelming demand. That may be the biggest concern for these companies right now, but their legality is still pending a court ruling.
