rewrite this title Even VC firms are getting in on the viral hype around ChatGPT’s updated image generator

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Madrona Managing Director S. “Soma” Somasegar, left, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as depicted in a Studio Ghibli -style animated image created using ChatGPT-4o’s new AI image generator. (Madrona via LinkedIn)

You might not remember seeing Matt McIlwain or S. “Soma” Somasegar in “Spirited Away,” but the managing directors of Seattle VC firm Madrona are among the latest “characters” to get the Studio Ghibli treatment thanks to OpenAI’s updated image generator.

In a post on LinkedIn on Thursday, Madrona shared images created with ChatGPT-4o in the style of the beloved Japanese animation studio.

“We couldn’t resist,” the post read. “From AI agents to animated founders, we’re always exploring what’s next.”

Images show McIlwain raising a toast and Somasegar interviewing Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at last week’s annual meeting and 30th anniversary celebration for the firm. The animated renderings possess very close similarities to actual photographs from the event, which Madrona shared in an earlier post.

Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain raises a toast in an animated image created with AI. (Madrona via LinkedIn)

OpenAI released its new AI image generator on Tuesday, and since then the internet has been flooded with Studio Ghibli-style treatments of everything from President Donald Trump to “Star Wars.” As TechCrunch pointed out, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even updated his X profile image to the style.

The image generator — which can create content from a text prompt — is also generating a fair share of concern about how such models are trained and the copyright infringement implications.

OpenAI said it trained ChatGPT-4o on “publicly available data” as well as proprietary data from its partnerships with companies like Shutterstock, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The real photographic version of Madrona’s S. “Soma” Somasegar and Satya Nadella from Madrona’s 30th anniversary event in Seattle. (Madrona via LinkedIn)

The photo version of Matt McIlwain’s Madrona toast. (Madrona via LinkedIn)

The company said on its website that “combined with aggressive post-training, the resulting model has surprising visual fluency, capable of generating images that are useful, consistent, and context-aware.”

How the AI tools are trained to imitate styles is where violation of copyright law can come into play, TechCrunch noted. A group of news organizations, including The New York Times, are already suing OpenAI and Microsoft, its major investor and partner, alleging that copyrighted works are used to train ChatGPT.

“We’re respecting of the artists’ rights in terms of how we do the output, and we have policies in place that prevent us from generating images that directly mimic any living artists’ work,” Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer, told The Wall Street Journal this week.

Meanwhile, if you’re tempted to make a Studio Ghibli-style image of you and your dog or kid or whatever, the view on AI of the director behind the films might sting a little.

Mashable reported that fans are pointing to a clip from the 2016 documentary series “Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki,” in which the filmmaker said of AI: “Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”