They say if you give a monkey a typewriter and an infinite amount of time it could in theory produce the full works of Shakespeare. Brainiacs call it the infinite monkey theorem. Just pulled that up to highlight that given a long enough time period — anything and everything could happen.
Something I never thought was highly probable recently happened. Last week a significant chunk of social media transformed into ghibliverse. Rewinding to a few years ago, not many had heard of Ghibli movies. I recall connecting over Studio Ghibli with only a handful of friends. Others were not acquainted and quite a few were also not open to watch animated stuff. This is before the era of mass percolation of anime in India.
Today it’s quite popular and cool — no longer the niche it used to be. And so everyone is a weeb and has a waifu. As an OG anime enthusiast (err, pre-Netflix anime watcher), I am not complaining. Let’s just say I am glad I have more people to share my interest with. Even if it means watching reels of Naruto dubbed in various Indian languages with some cringe Bollywood songs in the background.
As often accompanied with viral trends, GPT also invited major backlash on social media — calling training the models on other people's art blasphemy/treachery or intellectual property theft.
Sigh.
This has been a frequent theme of criticism for AI models ever since they have come of age — especially image models. With old-school art fans (and more often than not people working in creative fields) criticising the implications of AI-generated art — how it is unethical and also how it is not art. This also highlights one of the most hyped byproducts of human intelligence: misinformed criticism of scientific developments.
Rather than being amazed at one of the peak moments of technological development, we reduced the moment to something we are all so well-versed with: criticism and moral supremacy. I mean, my article ain’t too far from it — it’s a criticism of criticism. But hear me out more...
The earliest mentions of artificial/computer intelligence go as far back as the late 1950s/early 1960s. Quite a few scientists even back then correctly predicted that such intelligence would borrow heavily from the basic architecture of the human brain: neurons. Neural networks and derivatives have been a huge area of scientific interest and research investment ever since.
So according to me, it is super cool that we have modelled something after the human brain itself. Isn’t it as close to godliness as we ever will be? The creation has become the creator — or so I will describe all of science and technology in a nutshell.
Coming back to Ghibli images and AI art haters — the argument that AI art is unfair to artists, this overarching fear is not new. We have seen criticism of many peak moments of development and progress.
Industrial revolution putting labor out of work? Didn’t happen.
Internet will put printing out of work? Nada.
Cars will replace horse carriages? Hell yes, and most welcome to do so.
Most such folks sharing this fail to understand that when tech and access become a commodity, a company cannot control the outcomes of usage every single time. I am an artist myself and I resonate with protecting the interests of art and keeping it pious. But we have done v0 of this debate decades back when digital art and drawing software came into being — and was compared with traditional art, and those who sweated around for hours standing close to an easel and holding that color palette.
It is debatable if training models are entirely unethical — and I hope they aren’t — but that is something which will need looking into by people who study law and IP as a profession. To an extent, we are all part of that training data, but yeah — an art style is not art. For if you watch closely, you would know that the output GPT produces is actually not even close.
I have watched 15+ Ghibli movies and I assure you of that. To the best understanding of my eye (subjective) — it is a generalized anime image that the prompt returns in a colour palette which feels inspired from Ghibli. That’s all. It is only now adopted by masses of internet users, but image models rendering anime-style images is a thing of the past — just like AI girlfriends, tonnes of apps doing that already. It is only styling your original images in a certain art style, does nothing to the composition of the picture.
No one cries foul when hundreds of street vendors sell Van Gogh print merchandise outside every tourist destination in France. I think we have accustomed ourselves to criticise big money every chance we get. A huge industry is based on selling merchandise like t-shirts, bags, badges without obtaining any licenses. The point I am making is — a lot of business cuts some corners around what can be called classic IP theft.
Full disclosure: I am not a robot just yet. And as an admirer of both physical and digital art — have done both quite fondly. I am also an engineer and I do not find machines and code entirely inhuman yet — it is a byproduct of human intelligence. I also very strongly believe in ethics and doing the right things.
When it comes to credit — every machine that you and I use today, even this computer I write this text on and the forum I will publish it on, to the server it will be hosted on — came from decades of work of many engineers, machinists, coders — whatever you choose to call them, not all of them wanted credit for the work they did.
Energy and intelligence are transferable and transmutable. The earliest computer devices in the pre-war era carried the intellectual signature of those who created them — and thus I am unsure how the world would look if they tried keeping their creations to themselves. So I guess what I am trying to say is: we have collectively benefitted so much from tech already, I wish we stop doing debates like AI: boon or bane etc.
So I feel last week was not a zero-sum week. I think it was a positive-sum game. And here is how: A lot of folks who hadn’t heard of Ghibli before now know it. I saw a lot of insta-shy people share images for the first time as they could partially hide themselves behind filters. It was cute to see so many couples soft-launch each other on Twitter. And for a few days, social media was net positive — which is quite rare these days.
So for my footnote I would just say:
We have come a long way from Microsoft Paint to AI-generated art.
Can y’all appreciate all the intellectual labor a little bit more?