Elon Musk Joins Studio Ghibli-Inspired Trend On Social Media With A Twist (Image: X/elonmuskparody)
The internet has recently been flooded with a new wave of creative, Studio Ghibli-inspired art created using OpenAI’s latest image-generation update within GPT-4.
This feature, released earlier this week, has taken social media by storm, allowing users to create portraits and memes that replicate the iconic animation style popularised by Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese animation studio co-founded by Hayao Miyazaki .
The wave of creativity has brought fans together from all corners of the web, transforming it into a Studio Ghibli-inspired playground.
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Even Elon Musk, the ever-controversial owner of the AI company Grok, has jumped on the bandwagon, adding his own twist to the trend.
Taking to his social media platform, X, Musk posted an image of himself reimagined in the Studio Ghibli style on Thursday.
However, in true Musk fashion, he gave the artwork a crypto connection. The image shows Musk as a monkey, proudly holding the DOGE mascot aloft. The caption reads simply, “Theme of the day,” followed by a humorous comment from another user who coined the term “GHIBLIDOGE.”
Theme of the day pic.twitter.com/2ioG0StAxL
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2025
Musk’s playful take on the Ghibli-inspired art, which also references the cryptocurrency DOGE, quickly gained attention.
Many crypto enthusiasts and market watchers couldn’t help but speculate about the connection, interpreting Musk’s post as a nod to his involvement in the DOGE movement.
Some took the opportunity to point out the irony of Musk using an image generator that is part of OpenAI’s GPT-4o update—OpenAI, after all, is the primary competitor of Musk’s own AI venture, Grok.
Despite the competitive rivalry between Musk and OpenAI, the post was well-received by many of his followers, who seemed to appreciate his creative contribution to the ongoing trend.
Many others jumped on the opportunity to create and share their Ghibli-inspired art, adding to the growing collection of fan-created pieces across social media.
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OpenAI’s new multimodal image generator, which debuted on Tuesday, is being hailed as one of the most advanced tools for creating realistic and artistic visuals.
It is capable of producing highly accurate outputs and is particularly adept at mimicking the beloved anime style of Studio Ghibli, known for masterpieces such as My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and The Boy and the Heron.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself weighed in on the trend, humorously revealing that he had received hundreds of messages from users sharing their Ghibli-style creations, often jokingly turning him into various characters, including the term “twink” being used in some playful comments.
>be me
>grind for a decade trying to help make a superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever
>mostly no one cares for the 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
Since Grok, Musk’s own AI company, is a direct competitor to OpenAI, many users are speculating whether Musk used his AI platform, Grok or Google’s Gemini to create his Ghibli-inspired image, rather than using OpenAI’s tools.
