Sam Altman Responds to Ghibli AI Art Criticism, Calls It a Net Benefit for Society

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the Sam Altman AI-generated art downsides, but continued to insist on its overall benefits.

"I believe the democratisation in creating content is a net gain for society. Altman made a virtual guest appearance on Varun Mayya's YouTube podcast on Sunday. "It hasn't been a total win. There are definitely negative things about this, but it certainly did something for the art form," Altman said.

Altman's comments come against a backdrop of a messy discussion around AI-generated artwork that was reignited by the recent viral Ghibli AI on social media.

OpenAI launched a native image-generation feature powered by OpenAI ChatGPT image generation GPT-4o within ChatGPT. AI-generated images with the style of Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli soon appeared on the Internet. The incident deepened the divide between AI supporters and its critics.

Altman also discussed other controversial issues, such as AI automation, its impact upon the job market, India's use case capital, and many others. The podcast highlights are listed below.

"Those with differential abilities will face more competition"

Hayao Miyazaki AI insult to life, the legendary animator who co-founded Studio Ghibli and was a Studio Ghibli AI trend social media himself, has been criticized for his AI work. A video of him appeared online amid this backlash. It was purported that the video showed Miyazaki calling AI "an insult to human life", but some users have pointed out it had been taken out of context.

Mayya asked Altman if Miyazaki was criticizing AI in the video. The OpenAI frontman responded, "It's not to say that AI-generated art doesn't lead to some job losses, and people with a kind of differential ability now face a lot of competition." Overall, I believe it's an important benefit for society.

Altman also said that he believed strongly in the ability of technology to lower entry barriers. "My personal experience was seeing the barriers to starting a business really change. OpenAI Jio Platforms ChatGPT partnership was an example where the barrier to entry for a number of pieces of technology became significantly lower.