Fans of AI K-pop band left scratching their heads after being told one of the virtual members was somehow ‘pregnant’
This is just downright strange
An AI-generated K-pop band has come under fire after the band’s creator announced that one of the virtual members would be departing the band as she was “pregnant.” The creator later revealed that the bizarre story was concocted as a way to write the AI musician out of the group.
The AI-generated band known as BABYQUEEN is a Chinese girl group in the same vein as real-life K-pop acts. The group launched back in September with five virtual members, all of which were accompanied by social media accounts and personas to share their fictitious activities with fans.
Despite AI in music generally being an unpopular trend, AI-generated songs and bands are a concept that has been steadily growing for the past couple of years. It’s apparent that people will still listen to such music, and where there’s an audience, there are those who will capitalize. And while you may think that generating AI music for a fake band might be easy, it apparently proved to be too strenuous a task for the band’s creator.
An AI pregnancy
According to an article from Dexerto, on October 12, the band’s fictional management company BABYPVSSY Entertainment announced that one of the members, Mity, was pregnant and would take maternity leave.
The announcement, which was posted to the Chinese social media platform Weibo explained that Mity would be suspending her activities in the band to prioritize her “health” as well as prepare for childbirth. The strange post quickly blew up on the platform, garnering more than 78 million views.
AI can be quite convincing nowadays, but most who responded to the post reportedly questioned the strange logic of the post, asking how an AI-generated character could be pregnant in the first place.
According to Sixth Tone, other Weibo users criticized the story, accusing those behind the AI band of disrespecting women and their reproductive experiences. Others joked about who the father might be, while others suggested that the decision to write Mity out of the band was due to the creators running short on tokens.
It turned out that wasn’t too far from the truth, as, in a since-deleted post, the team behind BABYQUEEN claimed that trying to manage the five virtual band members had become too exhausting and therefore the pregnancy story was concocted to remove one of the members.
“We’re just a few girls who like K-Pop, and we’re still students,” the creators claimed. They also claimed that they had experienced harassment over the project and that they had not made any money from BABYQUEEN. They also reportedly admitted that the pregnancy story was inappropriate and suggested that Mity could return at a later date.
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