Dave Rahardja<p>Every time I see a <a href="https://sfba.social/tags/Ghibli" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Ghibli</span></a> AI picture, my heart dies a little. Every time an image is made, we are all impoverished a tiny bit. A small shred of respect is lost for an old man and his crew toiling months at a time on seconds of animation, to tell stories of beauty, empathy, and humanity, a man who loathed <a href="https://sfba.social/tags/AI" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AI</span></a> from its earliest days as an affront to life itself.</p><p>Every time a cartoon facsimile is generated and used for a lark, a token bit of our common heritage is stolen, ground up, repackaged, and regurgitated like so much chewing gum, boiling gallons of water and spewing carbon to entertain someone for a moment with images as vapid and forgettable as the next.</p><p>Every time I see one of those images, I scroll past and shake my head a little.</p>