The frenzy to create Ghibli-style AI art using ChatGPT’s image-generation tool led to a record surge in users for OpenAI’s chatbot last week, straining its servers and temporarily limiting the feature’s usage.
The viral trend saw users from across the globe flood social media with images based on the hand-drawn style of the famed Japanese animation outfit, Studio Ghibli, founded by renowned director Hayao Miyazaki and known for movies such as “Spirited Away” and “My Neighbor Totoro”.
Average weekly active users breached the 150 million mark for the first time this year, according to data from market research firm Similarweb.
“We added one million users in the last hour,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an X post on Monday, comparing it with the addition of one million users in five days following ChatGPT’s red-hot launch more than two years ago.
Active users, in-app subscription revenue and app downloads reached an all-time high last week, according to SensorTower data, after the AI company launched updates to its GPT-4o model, enabling advanced image generation capabilities.
Global app downloads and weekly active users on the ChatGPT app grew 11 percent and five percent, respectively, from the prior week, while in-app purchase revenue increased six percent, the market intelligence firm said.
However, the chatbot has been hit with a series of glitches and low-scale outages over the past week as it deals with a spike in traffic due to the popularity of its image-generating tool.
“We are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges,” the OpenAI co-founder said on Tuesday.
Legal Uncertainty
The extensive use of the AI tool for the Ghibli effect has also led to questions about potential copyright violations.
“The legal landscape of AI-generated images mimicking Studio Ghibli’s distinctive style is an uncertain terrain. Copyright law has generally protected only specific expressions rather than artistic styles themselves,” said Evan Brown, partner at law firm Neal & McDevitt.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the data used to train its AI models and the legality surrounding its latest feature.
Studio Ghibli co-founder Miyazaki’s comments from 2016 on AI-generated images resurfaced after the trend blew up last week.
“I am utterly disgusted,” Miyazaki had said after being shown an early render of an AI-generated. “I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.”
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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