As with all technology, it is not inherently evil or good. It is a tool, and it depends how we use it. However, the current trend of OpenAI being able to copy the aesthetic of Ghibli Studios artwork, has some troubling implications.
I liked their use of the narrative in Spirited Away, one of my favorite films.
At the start of Hayao Miyazaki’s modern classic Spirited Away, the young heroine Chihiro and her parents are exploring a seemingly abandoned theme park when a boy named Haku greets her with a warning: Chihiro must cross back over a dry riverbed and head home before sunset while she still can. She fails to do so, and soon finds the river swollen and her parents turned into pigs, stranded in a new world she doesn’t understand.
I feel this as I sink into a new world, wherein our art and our stories, become little more than pieces of fleeting fashion. There is a concern here, that in this new world, rather than automation providing our salvation to some degree, freeing us from this exploitative economic system, we become slaves to it. I feel like Chihiro, caught in a world, needing to make a living in the bath house, longing for the simpler days when we had our families and communities. Now they feast on social medias, much like Chihiro's parents did as pigs.
However, at the end of the article, all is not lost...
As Spirited Away unfolds, an all-powerful taskmaster torments her workers in this new strange world, changing their names so they forget who they are. Haku arrives with another warning: Don’t forget your name or you’ll cease to exist, he tells Chihiro. She looks down at herself, barely remembering her lifelong moniker, trying mightily to remember her identity before it’s gone forever.
And is that not why we are here on this earth? To seek the truth, to remember who we are, no, not just the avatar. The Realme. While we do need to in some senses "zoom out" and view humanity, we must remember the individual pieces, and our experiences with the other pieces, as well. Lest we forget, and become slaves to a systematic exploitation.
There is a boy that was like Haku towards me recently, I suppose. And that is how I am realizing that I must never forget who I am. He told me to love myself. To understand I'm more than just this body and this slice of life. I do.
There's a lot to be done, now that I can. And part of that is to remind you all, the audience, that you have power. You have creativity. You need not seek it from the automated generation of dreamy aesthetics. Whether you write, or draw, or live and love, you are creating art, in a way only you can.
Great read my friend. lol my brother got his first tattoo from a studio Ghibli movie :) Totally, ALWAYS BE YOU! Don’t be any other version than the genuine human that is V and LOVE YOURSELF!