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Japanese trade organisation Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), representing publishers including Studio Ghibli, sent a letter to OpenAI last week, demanding that the AI giant stop using their copyrighted content to train its models without permission
Studio Ghibli, the renowned animation studio behind films like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, has been particularly affected. When ChatGPT's image generator was released in March, it quickly became a popular trend for users to generate "Ghiblified" re-creations of their selfies and pet photos.
Now, with more people gaining access to OpenAI's Sora video generation app, CODA has formally requested that OpenAI refrain from using its members' content for machine learning purposes without explicit consent.
This request comes amid broader concerns regarding OpenAI's general approach, which tends to "ask for forgiveness, not permission", making it easy for users to generate images and videos of copyrighted characters and even deceased celebrities
This approach has drawn complaints from various institutions, including Nintendo and the estate of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, whose likeness could be easily generated into a deepfake image using Sora.
The sentiments of the creative community were perhaps best summed up by Hayao Miyazaki, a central creative figure at Studio Ghibli
While he has not commented directly on the AI trend involving his work, when shown an AI-generated 3D animation in 2016, he responded that he was "utterly disgusted".
"I can't watch this stuff and find it interesting. I feel strongly that this is an insult to life itself," Miyazaki said.
