A Japanese trade organization representing publishers like Studio Ghibli wrote a letter to OpenAI last week, calling for the AI giant to stop training its AI models on their copyrighted content without permission.
Studio Ghibli, the animation studio behind films like “Spirited Away” and “My Neighbor Totoro,” has been especially impacted by OpenAI’s generative AI products. When ChatGPT’s native image generator was released in March, it became a popular trend for users to prompt for re-creations of their selfies or pet pictures in the style of the studio’s films. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman changed his profile picture on X to a “Ghiblified” picture.
Now, as more people get access to OpenAI’s Sora app and video generator, Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA) has requested that OpenAI refrain from using its members’ content for machine learning without permission.
>be me
>grind for a decade trying to help make superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever
>mostly no one cares for first 7.5 years, then for 2.5 years everyone hates you for everything
>wake up one day to hundreds of messages: "look i made you into a twink ghibli style haha"— Sam Altman (@sama) March 26, 2025
This request does not come unprompted. OpenAI’s approach to working with copyrighted content is to ask forgiveness, not permission, which has made it all too easy for users to generate photos and videos of copyrighted characters and deceased celebrities. This approach has yielded complaints from institutions like Nintendo, as well as the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who could very easily be deepfaked on the Sora app.
It’s up to OpenAI to choose whether to cooperate with these requests; if not, the aggrieved parties can file a lawsuit, though United States law remains unclear about the use of copyrighted material for AI training.
There is little precedent thus far to guide judges on their interpretation of copyright law, which has not been updated since 1976. However, a recent ruling by U.S. federal judge William Alsup found that Anthropic did not violate the law by training its AI on copyrighted books — the company did get fined for pirating the books it used for training, though.
But Japan’s CODA claims that this may be considered a copyright violation in Japan. Techcrunch event Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 WAITLIST NOW
“In cases, as with Sora 2, where specific copyrighted works are reproduced or similarly generated as outputs, CODA considers that the act of replication during the machine learning process may constitute copyright infringement,” CODA wrote. “Under Japan’s copyright system, prior permission is generally required for the use of copyrighted works, and there is no system allowing one to avoid liability for infringement through subsequent objections.”
Hayao Miyazaki, one of the central creative figures of Studio Ghibli, has not commented directly on the proliferation of AI-generated interpretations of his work. However, when he was shown AI-generated 3D animation in 2016, he responded that he was “utterly disgusted.”
“I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting,” he said at the time. “I feel strongly that this is an insult to life itself.”
Topics AI, copyright, Media & Entertainment, OpenAI, Studio Ghibli Amanda Silberling
Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos.
You can contact or verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at @amanda.100 on Signal. View Bio December 3, 2025 Palo Alto, CA
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