Hayao Miyazaki, AI art and the Desire for Instant Praise.

Famous Japanese illustrator, Hayao Miyazaki is trending around social media for the absolutely most irritating reason ever. Supposedly now people can generate memes and concepts using the power of AI. I don’t have a Twitter (for this exact type of reason) where the trend initially took off but when I found out about it and saw the screenshots began to leak on Instagram I became sick. I love Studio Ghibli. I’ve watched almost every movie. I have the physical copy of all my faves and I deeply respect Hayao Miyazaki stance on authenticity, skill in relation to Ai “art” if you can call it that - you can’t. Miyazaki despises AI. He finds it to be “an insult to life” and very disrespectful to the skill and sincerity of artistry and I whole heartedly agree with him. Ai meme’ifying any artist exact style of work is nasty but to intentionally doing that to an artist who has been so anti-AI, is low down. This trend has only exhibited the lack of ethic and sense of sacredness of art. The people who participated in it don’t know the emotional, mentally, spiritually, financially journey it takes to be an artist … or maybe they do.

I’ve been rattling my brain on just why the hell do some people love AI so much. For me it has no appeal. I love thinking, writing, creating on my own. Generating a something in another person’s art style and priding it as something I did on my own is embarrassing. I don’t get it but I wanted to understand.

I cracked it.

At least I’ve come to a logical reason that can help me understand and unboil my blood for a while.

The answer is instant gratification. The instant gratification of praise specifically. I think the BIG reason people entertain AI “art” as opposed to creating themselves is because they want to be creative but don’t want to go through the cringe of putting your original work Infront of the world and possibly being bad. They hide behind other artist styles that already are very popular and successful so no one can tell them it sucks. They don’t have to experience those first stages of no one giving af. They don’t have to experience the self-doubt. They want the coolness and culture of community being a creative but not the guts and true courage that it takes to start from the very beginning and the journey to develop that authentically.

You post a picture of your concept with Hayao Miyazaki’s art style its automatically going to go up. You will get likes, views, comments, attention and followers because Miyazaki already did all the decades of work of building himself up to be an artist people adore and recognize immediately. He took a talent and made a respectable name for himself. AI art is what happens when people are eager for the respect, attention and adoration of a successful artist but RIGHT FCKING NOW. AI art" is basically stealing someone else’s clout.

It’s lame. It’s corny. Its exhausting to have to explain basic ethics to people who don’t possess empathy or a concept of sentimental value (which I’ve come to know it surprisingly a lot over the few years) and in the spiritual sense its very fcking evil.
All of us artists, creators, writers are all nauseated by the seemingly take over of not just the fraudulence by Ai systems but the inability of foresight and care for other people have. It’s not new. Our society was birthed individualism and not caring how actions hurt others but social media has accelerated it the the moon.

I do not know what any of this means for the future of art or creatives. People are not going to stop being disrespectful. I do know we can not be erased and although apathy and selfishness win many battles, authenticity wins the soul. For now, it’s important for those who do have the eye of foresight to continue to voice how morally bankrupt this is and destructive types of Ai can be in the long wrong run. What has happened to Hayao Miyazaki’s work feels like a violation. It feels like nothing is sacred to the greedy and apathy someone how always find a way to erode. Apathy is is erode the sanctity of everything it surrounds but I’m not too cynical and believe empathy can restore.