AI Image Trends of 2025: Ghibli & Nano Banana Sweep Internet, Spark Privacy Debate

• OpenAI's GPT-4o sparked the "Ghiblification" trend, transforming photos into Studio Ghibli-style art, gaining immense popularity, especially in India.
• Google's Gemini "Nano Banana" enabled retro saree looks and 3D figurine aesthetics, maintaining facial consistency across edits.
• Both trends achieved massive popularity due to their accessibility, allowing users to create cinematic outputs with simple prompts and no design training.
• The surge raised significant ethical concerns regarding copyright, living artists' rights (with Hayao Miyazaki criticizing AI art), and data privacy.
• Discussions intensified on provenance with tools like SynthID watermarking, and warnings were issued against fake AI clone sites harvesting user data.

Why It Matters: 2025's AI image trends transformed visual creation, highlighting accessibility, ethics, and data privacy.