Studio Ghibli does not use AI tools at any stage of making its animated films. The studio still draws everything by hand, and director Hayao Miyazaki insists on doing whatever can be done manually. While Ghibli helped create a free animation software called OpenToonz — which later received AI add-ons made by a third party — there is no evidence Ghibli itself uses those AI features.

Ghibli's cinematographer Atsushi Okui, speaking during press for The Boy and the Heron (2023), confirmed that hand-drawing remains the studio's core production method. Ghibli co-developed OpenToonz with tech company Dwango in 2016 and released it as free, open-source software for the animation community. Third-party developers later added machine learning plugins to OpenToonz, but no reporting confirms Ghibli adopted them internally. Ghibli's only fully computer-generated film, Earwig and the Witch (2020), used standard 3D graphics software, not AI generation tools.