A Million New Users in One Hour: OpenAI’s Studio Ghibli Craze Breaks the Internet
AI image tools are more powerful (and controversial) than ever—what does that mean for the future of creativity?
BREAKING NEWS | NOT APRIL FOOLS | I finally caved 💸
Big news everyone (and this is no joke!) I finally gave in and got a paid ChatGPT account on Sunday.
I know, I know, you all thought I was ALREADY giving Sam Altman all of my money but the truth is, I’m very cheap and I have been doing everything I could for the last three years to not spend any money using AI tools.
But in the last week, the combination of wanting to build custom GPT’s for a potential app idea (coming soon!) and seeing the incredible image updates with GPT4o made me finally make the leap.
What’s crazier though is that it isn’t just me. In fact, I’m writing this two hours after OpenAI’s Sam Altman posted this tweet on the platform formerly known as Twitter:
As someone who helped a grocery delivery app scale 10,000% YoY in the first 3 months of the pandemic and knows a little bit about what it’s like to be behind the scenes of a company growing exponentially… I can’t even imagine what is happening behind the scenes at OpenAI today. Though I did relate to Altman’s post on Sunday…
This rate of growth is unprecedented, and, like most things in AI, complicated.
The Studio Ghibli Viral Craze & Open AI’s Biggest Surge Yet
Last week, OpenAI updated their model GPT4o in a variety of ways but only in two that caught people’s imagination.
Their AI image tool got dramatically better overnight: 4o can now make images that are super high quality AND incorporate text very well (!!!)
They removed the majority of their AI image guardrails: you can now make AI images of famous people, and more notably, made it possible for anyone to make any image look like it came straight out of a Studio Ghibli film
Sure, there were other updates but apparently everyone needing a Studio Ghibli cartoon version of themselves caused what Sam Altman described as a “biblical flood” of users.
This is especially ironic especially considering the Studio Ghibli founder, Hayao Miyazaki, has been famous among art circles for insisting that AI generated art was “an insult to life itself” back in 2016.
Now, to be fair, if you watch the entire video of the exchange, you’ll see that the software engineers show him AI generated art from 9 years ago that is not only so basic, some of it is awfully grotesque, so it’s not particularly surprising that he would have had that strong of a reaction.
That said, the viral craze has drawn back into light the one problem AI developers wish would go away: AI copyright concerns.
AI Art and Copyright | What Happens Next?
Considering our current federal government, I’m unsure how aggressively they will pursue action on copyright. Trump may have a Hollywood background, but I’m also not sure how much he cares.
That said, not only did this Studio Ghibli craze make OpenAI a lot of money, it helped them gain so many more users and so much usage that their GPU’s (electronic circuits) started melting and they had to build in limits to try to slow people down.
Assuming that all one million of those new users that ChatGPT got in one hour on Monday all got the $20 a month paid account, that’s $20 million an hour (!!!). Let’s make a bananas assumption and say they’re going to continue getting 1 million users an hour for the next 24 hours. That’s $480 million in one day compared to Studio Ghibli’s biggest box office hit ever “Spirited Away” which earned $395 million in box office earnings back in 2002.
That’s an incredible amount of value that one design style brought to a company that likely stole all of that data.
And even if OpenAI didn’t train the data on Studio Ghibli’s work directly (it’s very possible that OpenAI trained on millions of pieces of fanart) the question remains: should AI companies pay for art that is based off of distinct styles of artists or studios? And if they do, how will they go about doing so?
So now my question is. What do you think?
Have more thoughts? Send me a note below and have it featured in next week’s newsletter!
This Newsletter has been brought to you by… CirrusNorth!
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Quick Bytes:
Doctors Told Him He Was Going to Die. Then A.I. Saved His Life. - NYTimes
Google unveils a next-gen family of AI reasoning models - TechCrunch
Google's AI 'co-scientist' cracked 10-year superbug problem in just 2 days - Live Science
Perplexity wants to buy TikTok and open-source its algorithm - The Verge
AI is Breaking the Startup Playbook—Why Founders & VCs Are Freaking Out - Substack
The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise - Harvard Business School
In case you missed it:
This week’s podcast is fantastic for marketers or any non engineers in corporate! Check out my interview with AI Consultant Megan Starkey on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts.
After months of saying that I was going to relaunch the Youtube show I finally made an episode all about the phenomenal AI presentation tool Gamma!
Must Watch Videos About AI In the Last Week
Marques Brownlee talks about Apple’s lack of innovation in the AI space and concern that they have not been able to play catch up compared to their competitors.
Caya from Slidebean explains why AI currently looks exactly like the Dot-Com Bubble… but when will it pop? 👀
Matt Wolfe talks about the latest updates in AI this past week including all of the different things that you can make with GPT4o.
This Newsletter has been brought to you by… The PM Insider!
(Sponsored)
Learn AI Ethics From Stanford PhD Grad:
Acquaintance of the newsletter Dr Elizabeth Adams from the Minnesota Responsible AI Institute has a new course on Linkedin called “Leading Responsible AI in Organizations.” If you are interested in AI ethics or want to learn more about how to implement AI into your work safely and securely, this is a much watch. (And it’s free!)
In Case You Need an AI Pep Talk…
CatGPT is here to remind us that having access to GenAI tools like ChatGPT gives us access to unbelievable coaches and opportunities, right on our phones. :)
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