LA RIVOLUZIONE ALGORITMICA
Ghiblification: what do we see when we look at a copy?
by Francesco D'Isa
A critical and philosophical look at artificial intelligence and its influence on society, culture and art. The Algorithmic Revolution aims to explore the role of AI as a tool or co-creator, questioning its limits and potential in the transformation of cognitive and expressive processes.
Half the world has had fun generating “Studio Ghibli-style” memes thanks to the new text-to-image tools released by OpenAI. These creations have been welcomed with enthusiasm by some and met with scandal by others, particularly by those who consider them a “plagiarism” or a misappropriation of the style and characters of the famous Japanese studio.
But if you take a closer look, the images in question are either banal family photos reimagined or memes—both cases of decontextualised content created for playful rather than commercial purposes. Moreover, memes based on Studio Ghibli images existed well before the AI boom; they were made using stills from the auteur’s animated films, and this had neither shocked him nor the public.
So why are we scandalised only now, when memes have been around for ages? It’s obvious that the issue is AI itself, and indeed a 2016 video featuring Hayao Miyazaki is frequently referenced in this debate—one in which the maestro reacts with indignation to an experimental AI animation depicting zombie-like creatures. However, the video needs to be contextualised: at the time, AI solutions were still in an embryonic phase, and the grotesque nature of those images clashed with Miyazaki’s sensibility—he has always been deeply concerned with empathetic portrayals of characters. We don’t know whether his position has evolved in light of current developments or remains unchanged, especially considering Studio Ghibli’s traditionally conservative approach to technology. That old video continues to be cited as proof of a presumed categorical opposition to new forms of AI, yet the studio has only issued a terse “no comment” regarding the wave of memes—and it is ironic how those most eager to defend the author’s intent are the first to impose their own interpretations upon it.
Studio Ghibli’s apparent disinterest even hints at the possibility of a financial agreement between the parties. Firstly, the lack of negative reactions suggests there might be an understanding not to hinder the circulation of content that—intentionally or not—keeps media attention focused on Ghibli. The surge in online searches and brand-related sales coinciding with this mass phenomenon is indeed significant, reinforcing the notion that Ghibli’s silence is not merely disinterest but part of a strategy—or at least a tacit endorsement. These are, of course, speculations, but not without a certain logic.
For those familiar with the history of art, this controversy feels outdated. Artistic practice has often anticipated tensions that society would later confront, and today’s debate about AIs “copying” confirms this pattern. Heirs to Duchamp’s Fountain, artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein had already challenged the notion of originality in the 1960s, showing that the quotation or reuse of images—from commercial packaging to comic books—could be conceptually powerful and disruptive. In 1981, Sherrie Levine went further by photographing Walker Evans’s photographs and presenting them as her own, accelerating the authorship debate and forcing us to question the nature of the copy and the function of the contexts in which artworks circulate.
The idea of the “author” and “originality” varies across time and cultures. In classical antiquity, for instance, the concept of “copy” was far from negative, since art was essentially seen as a refinement or reinterpretation of an illustrious model. In the Middle Ages, copying manuscripts and codices (often with modifications) did not conflict with the idea of authenticity. In many Eastern traditions, artistic excellence was measured by one’s ability to conform to codified forms and techniques, rather than by individual expression. Only with Western modernity did the image of the author as a unique genius emerge, turning originality into a near-sacred value. In short, the notion of authorship is historically contingent, and every era, like every cultural context, offers different models of authenticity and appropriation.
However, these reflections have never been fully absorbed by the general public, which often clings to a Romantic and individualistic idea of art tied to the sacred labour of a genius (a myth that, as Nochlin pointed out in 1971, is deeply macho). But even if the debate isn’t consciously present, it has been absorbed: the rise of the internet and the spread of memes—based on decontextualisation and resemanticisation—have shown how the mass reworking of images is a common, spontaneous practice, almost a cultural reflex. With AI, the issue of copying has flared up again without acknowledging that it’s part of a long-established trajectory: art and philosophical thought—from Foucault to Barthes, from Baudrillard to Hito Steyerl—have already tilled the ground, and yet the conversation continues as if nothing had changed.
It is essential to understand that the image is no longer a mirror of reality, but a cultural sign—a fragment of language made of connections, references, and layers. If Baudrillard spoke of the “simulacrum” to highlight the void between copy and reality, and if Hito Steyerl analysed the hyperproduction and incessant circulation of images in the digital world, today we are witnessing another shift: the transformation from simulacrum to ideogram. The image becomes a sign that matters not for its correspondence to a referent, but for its ability to activate shared meanings.
In this sense, it is not about declaring the death of realism, but rather seeing how realism, understood as a “window on the world”, was a historical interlude shaped by specific cultural conditions, starting with the Renaissance and later reinforced by photography, which solidified the idea of a faithful reproduction of reality. Yet in earlier periods, images already had a strongly symbolic, at times alphabetic function—think of Egyptian hieroglyphs or East Asian ideograms. So this is not a leap forward, but rather a return to a practice where the image is read and used as a code.
Younger generations, immersed in a universe of visual and communicative flows, interact with images as if they were ideograms: they interpret them instantly and recombine them effortlessly, without feeling the need to anchor them to a realistic base. This explains the rift with those who still see the image as a mirror of something external, and experience its “appropriation” as an assault on authenticity. And yet the history of art and philosophy teaches us that the evolution of techniques, languages, and their functions is an integral part of the cultural process. From this perspective, AI is another accelerator in the transformation of how we perceive images—towards a dimension of pure shared sign: images, now for the first time created with words, return to functioning like words themselves—ideogrammatic signs.
Francesco D’Isa
Francesco D’Isa, a trained philosopher and digital artist, has exhibited internationally in galleries and contemporary art centres. After his debut with the graphic novel I. (Nottetempo, 2011), he published essays and novels for Hoepli, effequ, Tunué and Newton Compton. His latest novel is La Stanza di Therese (Tunué, 2017), while his philosophical essay L’assurda evidenza (2022) was published by Edizioni Tlon. His latest publications are the graphic novel Sunyata for Eris edizioni (2023) and the essay La rivoluzione algoritmica delle immagini for Sossella editore (2024). Editorial director of the cultural magazine L’Indiscreto, he writes and draws for various magazines, both Italian and foreign. He teaches Philosophy at the Lorenzo de’ Medici Institute (Florence) and Illustration and Contemporary Plastic Techniques at LABA (Brescia).
