Love, Memory, and the Ghiblification of Meaning
What my wedding taught me about the meaning of art in an AI Age
March 28, 2025, was my wedding day.
Love was densely present over the course of the day—I cried of pure joy at least five times, danced like there wasn't a care in the world, and all fears of being deeply intimate and vulnerable in front of 100+ people were completely wiped away. I blissfully floated through the night with my stunning and beautiful wife. Our families were delighted with the day, too! We received so many compliments on our venue, food, and overall experience.
My wife and I planned an event that turned out incredibly successful with virtually no hiccups, and for that, I am both proud and grateful.
It was beyond remarkable and a breathtaking experience.
Over the next two days, we reminisced. I OBSESSED over it—it's all I could think about. I want to live the night again, over and over. We talked with family to hear their stories. We checked Facebook to see posts. We refreshed our shared Google Photos album to check for new uploads. We waited on the edge of our seats for the professional photos captured throughout the event.
The night ended, though. And the weekend passed.
Now, I'm back at my day job, and life continues. It's a great thing to keep the forward momentum, but it's a terribly hard thing to move forward from something so beautiful.
The morning of my wedding, I had time to spare as I waited for the groomsmen to rally. Feeling restless, I used some of that time to find an interesting article to read as I scrolled through Substack notes.
It wasn't long before I came across AI images in Studio Ghibli style, which was the trend with the GPT-4o new image-generation capability released last week. Quite a strange juxtaposition on the morning of an emotional and loving day. For those unfamiliar, GPTs new image generation in its 4o series is remarkably good at making any photo you give it Studio Ghibli styled (much like the thumbnail image at the top of this post). EVERYONE seemed to be posting images of memes or family photos in the Ghibli style (to catch up, here's a good aggregation, or search X and scroll).
Wow! I noticed at first—Quite impressive!
The quality seemed superb, and the Ghibli style is so unique that I never would have imagined it could be commoditized in the way GPT-4o churns out images.
Erik Hoel constructs the case in Welcome to the semantic apocalypse that this oversaturation from generative AI strips the meaning from authentic art.
Alberto Romero contends that we do not handle abundance well because we evolved for scarcity, and therefore, we must learn to draw the line about how much we consume to avoid this loss of meaning.
I can't help but see their arguments and let the unease settle in.
If we're right at the beginning of this art overconsumption, will we have to go through years of over-consuming images and text that give us something akin to art diabetes? Could we potentially become numb to art because the ease and accessibility of generation is so prolific that the sheer abundance strips the meaning from art? What if art degradation creeps in, given the extraordinarily low effort for 90% of the quality—why go through the 18 months of creating 100% art if you can get 90% in 30 seconds?
All valid questions—all valid concerns.
I can't help but return to the night of my wedding.
In many ways, it was a perfect week for OpenAI's Ghibli moment. I wasn't glued to X. I wasn't glued to my inbox. I wasn't spending time diving into the depths of arguments to understand the impact of the Ghiblification of photos. I was present in all the moments of the week.
And while people were scrolling to scratch the Ghibli itch, I was scrolling to scratch my wedding itch. The night touched me in a way I haven't really felt before. The presence in the room was more than just people; it was as if gods of love danced through the room—they were felt through the night, and it's a rare occasion that space is made for those spirits by that many people, all at once.
The night became mythologized. My obsession with getting my hands on anything to remind me of it was immediate. Though sadly, life moves on. And one day soon, the memories and feelings of the day will slip into the unconscious and we move forward. That is until someone asks about the day. Brings a story back to reminisce on. Or simply, a photo crosses my vision, and I am reminded of how I felt and what it meant to me.
I can't help but see this with the Ghibli photos. Does this strip meaning from Studio Ghibli's art? I'm not sure it does. It might add meaning to the photos that become Ghiblified. It jolts the memories and feelings back to consciousness of my experiences with Ghibli Studio films and of the moments that are Ghiblified. In fact, it doesn't make me numb with meaning when thinking about Studio Ghibli—it makes me want to go and catch some of the Ghibli films I haven't yet seen.
Now, to be fair, I haven't oversaturated myself with Ghibli photos since I wasn't connected to the extent I typically am. This served me well. While everyone was stuffing their face, I was microdosing. And that might be the point: where is the line drawn? It's where you keep meaning intact.
Where you can reminisce but still move forward, not stuck in the past, but properly nostalgic about it.
I understand the counterargument, though, and still can't overlook it. The fact that Ghibli-quality anime is everywhere can potentially take away from the Ghibli films, making what was pristinely rare, now at every corner, personalized any way you'd like. It's similar to the way I wondered if hiring a videographer for our wedding might have detracted from the night's romance. It's as if the video snippets and pictures allow the story from everyone's perspective to fill in the gaps, keeping something about the night quite precious in that it's not 100% known—not solved in the way Ghibli art now feels. Too much of something is not good, and that's generally true for most things.
But while the commoditization of Ghibli images makes something once unique, available for everyone, humans paradoxically manage to find meaning in the mundane. There's a Starbucks on every street corner and a coffee pot in most American homes—coffee is a commoditized product. Humans still have rituals around their cups of coffee. Some go as far as spending a meditative 10 minutes making the optimal and best cup of coffee. My ritual is to pair a crisp Nespresso coffee with my morning peanut butter walnut oatmeal as if it sets me forward in my day and gives it some more essence.
So maybe the commoditization of Ghibli's art won't strip its meaning away but push us to seek it more deeply. It may be that there's something living and breathing in the way the animations are populated with stories. Whatever it is, I know that Ghiblified photos of my wedding make me want two things: the wedding night again and a nice night on the couch with my wife, our puppy, and Spirited Away animating our TV.
I also get that, eventually, AI might get from 90% Ghibli to 100% Ghibli quality. It may be that this takes away meaning from the process of animating. If that happens, I hope it prompts the emergence of new ways of imbuing meaning into the art form itself. Maybe it means that Studio Ghibli can turn around more meaningful movies because of the lower cost of producing the images. I know this is a change in the way that things are done, and change is moving away from some way that worked before. Or something that you previously liked.
And while moving on from familiar systems, routine processes, or cherished events is inevitable, we don't have to lose touch with what they mean to us or how deeply they make us feel.
~Dom
Congratulations on your wedding! Happy married life!!