When AI Makes Art, Where Do Artists Draw The Line?

Circa 1947, somewhere in post-war Japan, a boy used to sketch airplanes. He was quiet, observant, obsessed with flight - not the power of it, but the poetry. His country was rebuilding. His family made aircraft parts. And while others saw machines of might, he imagined clouds, weightlessness, escape.

He kept drawing and dreaming. He never learned to love war, and he never stopped loving motion. That conflict would go on to shape his ideas, his profession, and his legacy.

You might wonder why I'm talking about some boy doodling in Japan. Why is it relevant to us, our timelines or even AI? This is relevant if you've seen the recent burst of 'Ghibli-style images' flooding the social media feed. This is relevant because this is the story of Hayao Miyazaki, the founder of Studio Ghibli, a popular Japanese animation studio.

This introduction above was to provide context to the art and the artists that our endless AI-generated art misses.

In the last week of March, my - and I'm sure yours too - social feed was taken over by a wave of images "in the style of Studio Ghibli." Why, what, and how?

Main character? No.
He's the whole storyline

Experience through New India in Studio Ghibli strokes.#StudioGhibli#PMModiInGhibli pic.twitter.com/bGToOJMsWU

— MyGovIndia (@mygovindia) March 28, 2025

That's the thing with virality - it leaves little time to feel. It replaces reflection with repetition. Why are we doing it? Because everyone else is posting a filtered image. What's even this artform? Who even cares? What began as curiosity quickly morphed into saturation. And just as quickly came the backlash.

Artists and animators started raising a flag:

Was this art, or was it theft?

Was this homage, or dilution?

And who gets to decide?

Sahid SK, co-founder of Megalodon, an AI-tech and marketing company, credits AI for opening creative doors for him. "It felt magical," he recalls. "Suddenly, I could visualise all my wild, creative thoughts." Sahid isn't surprised by the criticism of AI-generated art, but he's not apologetic either. "Art styles don't have copyrights!" he says. "People have been copying art styles for thousands of years, from Darwin and Van Gogh to Picasso, Frida Kahlo, and Miyazaki himself. They did this because they felt inspired. Should we really call all these inspired artists thieves?"

It's a fair point - but one that feels different when replication is at scale and stripped of nuance. For instance, the Ghibli filter, which doesn't carry any credit or copyright details, feels less about crafting a tribute and more about generating content.

Of course, emotional depth isn't always the AI's primary concern. Volume is. Reach is.

Omar Karim, a freelance AI creator who began exploring creative utility with AI during his time at Meta, puts it succinctly: "The ability to create without limitation," is what drew him in. "The rest is history." As for the Ghibli controversy, Omar is clear-eyed about the economics behind it. "Style is not copywritten, only replication is - AI cannot replicate, it can mimic," he says. "Arguably, the studio is more famous because it had a viral moment and I would imagine their sales have gone up and so has their brand awareness - for free - I imagine the PR value of going globally viral is immense."

Mira Malhotra, founder of Studio Kohl, sees a widening ethical gap. "Most pop culture art styles have not been copyrightable for a reason," she says. "However, in the advent of a world where a multi-million dollar tech corporation can duplicate artists' work at an incredible output and speed. I do believe that art styles should now be copyrighted-especially totally faithful renditions."

That's exactly what the Ghibli-style filter felt like for many: a flattening of nuance. A sanitised rendition of something deeply personal. What's being eroded isn't just visual originality - it's authorship. It's context. It's labour.

"We can't romanticise creative labour forever," says Mira, known for her feminist and pop-culture-infused illustrations. "But neither can we ignore that some things - like artistic voice - take years to form."

Omar offers a way to think about this dynamic: "People call it a tool - this is incorrect - anyone that uses a tool has the same outcome. You use a spanner, I use a spanner - the bolt gets tighter. To be a creative, you have to risk sharing your true self, in public again and again. Using AI doesn't make you creative until you've stood in a room of people to share your ideas and art with your whole heart. "

That's something Saiam Hasan, Assistant Programming Director at Channel 4 Radio Network UAE, is clear about: "Creativity is to break the clutter, do something unique and different," he says. "AI can only replicate what has already been done... I don't see it giving us something truly new."

And if art is about newness - about seeing with fresh eyes - then what are we really gaining by automating imagination? Creativity is about brewing something with a sweet taste of surprise. Sort of like a recurring rhythm tuned to a catchy beat drop.

In music, where AI tools have been around longer, these questions are already playing out. Anshuman Sharma, a music producer and Youtuber known for his viral mashups, has used AI to mimic iconic voices-from Sonu Nigam to Mohammad Rafi. For Anshuman, it's not just about style - it's about honesty. "I was one of the few who started this trend of using AI to mimic other artists' voices," he says. "But my intention wasn't to fool people, I always stated clearly that it was AI," he says. "But the real issue is when it's passed off as original - that's worrisome and will eventually happen a lot in the future."

Anshuman sees AI as a means to enhance, not replace. "There are cool tools where you sing a melody, and it turns into a saxophone," he says. "That's fun. That's helpful. But if you only use prompts, you miss the point of making music altogether."

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This push-pull - between assistance and authorship, efficiency and ethics - comes up often.

Aatreyee Choudhury, a visual designer at Prime Video, describes AI as a creative warm-up act. "When deadlines are brutal, AI can give you a head start - a colour palette, a moodboard, an idea." But that's where she draws the line. "It doesn't take away from the vision; it supports it. Used mindfully, it creates room for deeper thinking."

She, like Mira, believes the burden of meaning still lies with the human. AI might produce the pixels, but it's people who give them purpose. And when the process itself is stripped away? What's left?

Sravya MG, Creative Head at The Friday Code, an ad agency, puts it plainly: "AI does not add any creative value. It can be used as an assistant or intern, but not as a standalone resource." Her concerns stretch beyond creativity - she worries about the environmental cost. "If the cost of the technology is our planet, what are we even arguing about?"

Maybe that's what made Miyazaki's own reaction to AI so jarring - and prophetic. In 2016, he was shown an AI-generated animation: a deformed, limping creature. The engineers beamed. He recoiled. "An insult to life itself," he called it.

And maybe that's what this really is about. The inexplicable frustration of seeing machines create AI is probably not gatekeeping. It's the feeling of loss, perhaps. Of losing out on another fertile ground that was once rich for human expression.

A loss of friction. Of vulnerability. Of effort.

Today, in our rush to prompt and produce, we risk forgetting that there's more to art than just a few seconds of screen time before it's brutally scrolled away.

And in this moment - when creativity feels outsourced to artificial intelligence, and originality feels flattened - maybe it's worth asking what cannot be prompted. That's where we, the humans, will thrive.