Part 1:
I'll start with a little story from yesterday.
Last night, I was hit with a serious snack craving around midnight (yeah, I know I should fix my sleep schedule). So I tossed some potatoes into an automated chopper, threw the slices into an air fryer, and well, well... I had my midnight french fries. And honestly? In that moment, they tasted like heaven.
Now, if you're an art snob, you might say that I didn't really cook.
Because, obviously, unless I’m using a wood-fired oven, harvesting ingredients from a farmer named Ghalib who sings lullabies to his potatoes, hand-grinding spices, and slow-roasting everything over an open flame for twelve hours... I’ve apparently committed a crime against cuisine.
Well, I understand your feelings, but let's be honest: this is nothing but a very narrow-minded, elitist mentality where you're being nothing but extremely pretentious. You see yourselves as “real” artists or curators of culture, and anything outside that tradition is automatically seen as fake or shallow. You just want to gatekeep it.
Back when photography first came around, painters and traditional artists freaked out. They thought photography would kill art-- like, “Why would anyone paint anymore when you can just snap a picture?” But eventually, photography became its own art form, with its own techniques, styles, and creativity. So that fear? It was fake.
AI art is kind of the same. It’s not replacing art, it’s just a new tool that lets people express ideas in a different way. Just like a camera doesn’t make someone a great photographer automatically, AI doesn’t make someone an amazing artist by default. But give it to someone with vision and creativity? They can do amazing things with it. And I’ve seen so much incredible AI art that I could never create myself, but it’s amazing.
And this whole thing doesn’t cheapen “real” art. It just opens the door to more people making their kind of art. That’s it.
Now, I might’ve used some strong words in the beginning, but if you're still reading, well, I genuinely don’t like this elitist mentality. It’s toxic. Why do you hate the idea of decentralising art if it’s making it more accessible to people? I generated a few pictures of myself in Studio Ghibli’s style, and honestly, I was really happy with the result. There are so many people who would’ve never been able to see themselves in that kind of art unless this technology existed.
Why do you hate the idea of people being happy?
These are just questions to reflect on.
Part 2:
Now, I wanna address the “elephant in the room” about the question of “stealing art”
This is the big-one and probably the most misunderstood part of the AI art debate.
Disclaimer: Let’s be clear right from the start: yes, some AI models have been trained unethically. There are cases where copyrighted artwork was scraped from the internet without artists’ permission and fed into training datasets. That’s a serious problem, and artists have every right to be upset about it. Consent and attribution matter.
But let’s also be honest that’s not what all AI art is. Not every use of AI is stealing. Lumping everything under the same accusation oversimplifies a much more complex and much more interesting conversation.
There’s a difference between the tool and how it’s used. Just like a camera can capture your own moment or be misused to plagiarize someone else’s work. AI can either generate something original based on prompts, or intentionally copy an existing artist’s exact style. It all comes down to intent and ethics.
If someone’s generating Ghibli-style art for fun-imagining themselves in a whimsical world and it’s not a frame-for-frame copy of an actual scene or character, then let’s be real: that’s not theft. That’s fan art. And fan art has existed for decades. People have been doing it with pencils, paint, Photoshop, now they’re doing it with AI. Same energy, new medium.
And, if we’re being real here, you can’t copyright a vibe. A color palette. A brushstroke. If that were possible, Van Gogh’s swirls or Studio Ghibli’s dreamlike tones would be locked away forever. What you can protect is the actual artwork-specific characters, compositions, designs, stories.
So when AI generates something inspired by a style but not copying a specific scene or character that’s not stealing. That’s how all art works. Someone saw Miyazaki’s magic and wanted to create their own story that feels like it belongs in that universe. That’s not crime, that’s creativity.
Now, I wanna talk more from the perspective of Logic and Philosophy.
Nothing in art has ever been created in a vacuum. Every artist, whether traditional or digital, stands on the shoulders of those who came before them. Styles evolve, blend, clash, and remix over time. You study what you love, consciously or unconsciously absorb it, and then reinterpret it in your own way.
Van Gogh learned from Japanese woodblock prints. Picasso was influenced by African tribal art. Miyazaki himself has spoken about being shaped by European animation and storytelling. So when someone says “AI stole my style,” we need to take a step back and ask: what even is originality?
Your favorite artist likely “stole,” borrowed (i'm skeptical about using these two words), or adapted techniques from someone else. That’s not theft it’s the history of art. The difference is, humans do it slowly and subtly. AI just does it faster and more obviously.
Now, for y’all artsy people who don’t understand technology let me enlighten you with something since I am an advocate against gatekeeping.
How does AI even “learn” art?
AI doesn’t copy images pixel by pixel. It doesn't have a folder labeled “Ghibli Art” that it pulls from like a clipart gallery. What it does is learn patterns from huge datasets: color palettes, composition trends, brushstroke textures, lighting, anatomy proportions... basically, math. It “sees” a thousand forests and starts to understand what makes a forest feel like a forest.
When trained on a diverse, ethical dataset, it doesn’t replicate art, it generates new interpretations based on those learned patterns.
Is that different from a human spending years studying art books, film stills, museum pieces, and Pinterest boards, then drawing something in a style that feels like what they’ve seen? Not really. One’s just carbon-based. The other’s code.
So is AI stealing? Or are people just uncomfortable with how fast it’s learning?
There are real ethical questions when AI models are trained without consent but let’s not pretend this is a clean line in the art world either. Artists have always copied each other. They've always riffed off trends, styles, and movements. AI is just doing what we’ve always done… at scale, and faster.
The truth is, most people crying “theft” aren’t even the ones being stolen from. They just hate the idea of creativity being democratized. Of losing control over what “counts” as real art.
But guess what? Creativity doesn’t belong to the few anymore. It never should’ve.
Part 3:
In the end, I'd like to say that this doesn't really change anything about art for passionate people. For example, I’ve never talked about this before, but I have a thing for vinyl records. I can literally stream music for free, but I still pay for a record. That said, I also stream music on Spotify or YouTube Music (and sometimes Apple Music, lmao).
Similarly, many people pay for hand-knitted sweaters, or there's this Japanese brand called Momotaro Jeans. They're a Japanese denim brand known for their high-quality, handcrafted jeans made with premium selvedge denim. People who are passionate about denim pay the premium for that but they also don't disqualify all other jeans.
It's the same idea: more accessibility means more people can afford it, while you can still pay the premium for your “pure art.” You can still get a wood-fired oven, harvest ingredients from a farmer named Ghalib who sings lullabies to his potatoes, hand-grind spices, and slow-roast everything over an open flame for twelve hours for your very “American” French fries.
