Leo's Lightbulbs💡

The big news this week is OpenAI’s image generator and the Studio Ghibli memes it spawned. Icymi: everyone has been using OpenAI’s easy-to-use new image generator to turn images from memes, real life, photos and movies into Studio Ghibli versions. Everyone is pretty up in arms about it, especially since the creator of most Ghibli films said 9 years ago how soul-sucking he thought AI image generation was. Now, it was said in a different context, so who knows what he would say about the latest - he hasn’t made a statement.

What’s interesting about this is the technology to do this has been around for at least a year now using other image generator models, the tech was simply made mainstream by OpenAI in including it in their widely used model. I’m happy to see all the debate going on about intellectual property, law and ethics - issues that have existed around AI since its inception.

In response to the controversy, OpenAI put in halfhearted blocks against making Studio Ghibli images with their model, but this doesn’t really address the root issues around intellectual property. Ultimately, I think that we will have to head in a direction where everything is allowed to be used for AI training, but companies have to somehow give residuals to artists and creators when their work is used by users.

Oh, also, xAI acquired X, partly due to X’s issues with debt and financing, but also due to xAI’s need for training data. I’m sure regulators will have questions about this transaction.