The viral phenomenon has won so much traction that OPENAI CEO Sam Altman Humor pleaded with humor so that users slow down, saying that his team needed to sleep and could not work 24/7. But how did this trend explode in popularity?
Meet Grant Slatton: Man behind the viral trend Ghibli ai
While the Ghibl-Généré style images were possible before were possible, the Seattle-based software engineer, Grant Slatton, played a crucial role in the realization of the general trend.
Shortly after Openai introduced his improved image generation tools, Slatton shared a Ghibl-Ghibl-Généré style photo of his family and his dog at the beach on X (formerly Twitter). His article, subtitled: “Huge Alpha at the moment in sending your wife’s photos to convert to anime studio Ghibli”, quickly increased, accumulating 44,000 likes and more than 46 million views.
Huge alpha at the moment by sending your wife photos of Yall converted to Ghibli Anime studio pic.twitter.com/froszdfsfn
– Grant Slatton (@grantslatton) March 25, 2025
His tweet triggered a flood of similar messages, because users on social networks rushed to transform their own photos into works inspired by Ghibli-.
Although Slatton was not the first person to use the tool, his viral post helped to catapult the trend in global popularity.
How to create free ghibli-style images
After the success of the trend, Openai rendered its image generation function supplied by AI accessible to free users on Chatgpt. Here’s how you can try it:
- Open the website or chatgpt application.
- Click on the “+” sign in the lower left corner to download an image.
- Type “Ghiblify this” or “Transform this image into a portrait of Ghibli-Studio style”.
- In a few seconds, your Ghibl-Sera style image ready to download and save.
Why is this trend so large?
The generation of images fueled by AI has existed for years, but text -like text tools have recently drawn massive attention, thanks to the new native chatgpt image capacities. Previously, these features were limited to paying subscribers, but OpenAi’s decision to allow free users to speed up the trend.
Meanwhile, XAI’s Grok 3 chatbot has also gained popularity, users taking advantage of its AI tools to create ghibl-similary style transformations.
Ghibli’s sustainable magic
Studio Ghibli, founded by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, has enchanted the public for decades with films like Magnificent, my neighbor Totoro, And Howl moving castle. Their distinct hand -drawn animation, their palettes of soft colors and their dreamlike worlds have influenced generations of animators and artists.
Now, thanks to AI, fans can immerse themselves in the magic of Ghibli by entering their own world of Ghibli- a portrait at the same time.