It’s not every day that Studio Ghibli ends up in a showdown with Silicon Valley, but here we are. Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), a trade group representing heavy hitters like Studio Ghibli, just sent a strongly worded letter to OpenAI, politely asking the company to stop feeding their copyrighted works to its AI models without permission. The kerfuffle started when OpenAI rolled out its image generator earlier this year, and the internet collectively lost its mind over “Ghibli-style” portraits. Suddenly, everyone’s selfies and pets were reimagined as if they’d wandered out of Spirited Away. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman got in on the action, swapping his X profile picture for a “Ghiblified” version of himself. But as OpenAI’s new video generator, Sora, starts making waves, CODA isn’t smiling at the whimsy. The group says enough is enough, requesting that OpenAI stop using their members’ content for training unless it gets explicit permission. And given Japan’s stricter copyright laws, this isn’t just a polite nudge; it’s a warning shot across the Pacific. OpenAI, for its part, has generally followed a “forgiveness over permission” approach, an attitude that’s drawn heat not only from Japanese studios but also from global powerhouses like Nintendo and even the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Critics worry that tools like Sora could churn out deepfakes of copyrighted characters, or real people, without consent. The legal waters here are murky. US copyright law hasn’t had a major update since 1976, and while a recent…Studio Ghibli demands OpenAI halt training on their work