Studio Ghibli-style portraits created using ChatGPT become an instant meme - here's how to do it

Everything from iconic internet memes to historic photos and classic film scenes have been reimagined as Studio Ghibli-style portraits with the help of ChatGPT.

Fans of the legendary Japanese animation studio are making the most out of the OpenAI chatbot's latest update, which launched on Tuesday (March 25) as the company says is “the most advanced image generator yet," as a result of a “natively multimodal model capable of precise, accurate, photorealistic outputs”.

This latest addition to the GPT-4o has meant users can replicate the artistic style of filmmaker and studio co-creator Hayao Miyazaki, with some of the popular films created by the studio including Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro.

Since this latest update, users have had a field day with Studio Ghibli-inspired pictures popping up everywhere on social media - here is a roundup of the most viral ones.

"Today is a great internet day," one user declared as he shared popular memes in this format, such as the Distracted Boyfriend meme, the Olympic shooter meme of Turkish competitor Yusuf Dikec, and the Disaster Girl meme.

"ChatGPT, when another Studio Ghibli request comes in," a second person posted, alongside a Studio Ghibli image of the Ben Affleck smoking meme.

Memorable movie scenes from classic films such as Star Wars, Scarface, The Godfather and The Lord of the Rings also got the AI Studio Ghibli treatment.

"In the coming days, people are going to anime every iconic photo in history," a fourth user posted along with the Studio Ghibli-style portrait of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Another person shared "No f****ing way dude, this Studio Ghibli thing has gone way too far," along with Studio Ghibli versions of the 9/11 attacks, and the moment President George W. Bush was informed of the terrorist attacks.

More recent political moments have been reimagined with the tool, such as the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump last year, as well as President Trump and Vice President JD Vance's tense White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month.

Just in case you wanted to know what a jumping Elon Musk looks like in Studio Ghibli format...

Keeping it up-to-date with the latest viral meme, someone else posted a Studio Ghibli version of fitness influencer Ashton Hall doing his extreme morning routine, which recently caught the internet's attention - bottle of Saratoga Water included, of course.

And an ice water facial...

OpenAI CEO responds to the trend - and joins in too

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has seen all the Studio Ghibli AI content generated by his tool and has shared his thoughts on the trend in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

">be me
>grind for a decade trying to help make superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever
>mostly no one cares for first 7.5 years, then for 2.5 years everyone hates you for everything
>wake up one day to hundreds of messages: 'look i made you into a twink ghibli style haha,'" he posted.

He also went further by joining in on the trend himself by changing his X profile picture into the same Studio Ghibli style.

How can I create these AI portraits?

For those who are premium subscribers on ChatGPT (which is $20 per month), they can upload any images into the system and enter their request for the chatbot to turn the snaps “into the style of Studio Ghibli”.

It looks like it will be a longer wait for this tool to become available for free members, as Altman posted: "Images in chatgpt are wayyyy more popular than we expected (and we had pretty high expectations).

"Rollout to our free tier is unfortunately going to be delayed for a while."

Otherwise, you can try alternative AI models for free, such as Gemini or Grok, but it may have varied results due to the training and algorithm differences in these models, plus you might need to add more detail to your prompt for better results.

Elsewhere, ChatGPT gets stressed at negative news just like us, and a punctuation symbol is being hit with serious ChatGPT accusations – and people aren't happy.

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