Gearoid Reidy, Columnist

For a Brief Moment, Everything Was Ghibli

A viral trend sparked by an OpenAI tool shows our longing for a simpler world.

April 1, 2025 at 9:00 PM UTC

Gearoid Reidy is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Japan and the Koreas. He previously led the breaking news team in North Asia, and was the Tokyo deputy bureau chief.

Stepping away from reality.
© 2001 Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli, NDDTM

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For a brief moment, everything was Ghibli.

We all know that social media algorithms elevate material that you’ll engage with — typically content designed to enrage. But one instant last week felt like a reprieve when, following the release of a new OpenAI image-creation tool with few guardrails, suddenly everything was decked out in the telltale style of the Japanese animation studio.