Your Bias is a Robot?! | Justin Roman

Your Bias is a Robot?!

Aespa “Black Mamba”

Have you ever dreamed about what it would be like hanging out with your favorite band? Or what it would be like having them play at your own private concert? Well, it seems the largest K-Pop entertainment company in South Korea is providing a way for these dreams to be fulfilled in a VERY unusual manner.

Lee So-Man, the founder of SM Entertainment, recently revealed his latest project: aespa & æspa. aespa is a new girl group that consists of four virtual and four human members. The virtual members share both the names and appearances of their real life counterparts, but they have more computerized voices. What is most notable about this new creation is that the human members are able to dance simultaneously with their avatars; this creates a shocking visual.

So, how has the world of artificial intelligence found itself infiltrating the world of K-Pop? Lee So-Man claims that this shift towards AI is part of the next industrial revolution, citing COVID-19, various diseases, climate change, and more as the reasons why AI was created in the first place. He argues that its overall power and necessity will drive into all industries, including entertainment. In his defense, many technological advancements have already been incorporated into business

20 ASIAN OUTLOOK

By Justin Roman

UnitedKPop

dbkpop: K-Pop Database

models for the entertainment industry. SM’s BEYOND Live online concert has used Augmented Reality to enhance their existing groups’ stages by adding holographic displays that fit the theme of the performance. League of Legends, a popular video game, has created a virtual group, K/DA, which released a single and had a live performance in 2018. Both were so well received that they came back with a new performance and mini album just this month. As a final example, one of Korea’s largest telecommunications companies, SKT, made a hologram version of Red Velvet’s Wendy that can interact and converse with its users. With all of these strides towards more virtual entertainment, can they really live up to real people?

In my opinion, aespa completely misses the mark for me. What makes following a group so meaningful is the connection you feel with the artists. It is the journeys they have been through, the hard work they put in every day, and, most importantly, the emotion they show on stage that captivates audiences around the world. Adding virtual members loses all three of these factors and replaces them with fake dialogue put together by a developer. I doubt people would rather see the virtual girls perform over the real girls, meaning one side will clearly be favored over the other. In addition, since the virtual girls are avatars of their real ones, any scandals that befall a real-life member will still have an affect on the virtual group! I cannot help but wonder if this is just a way to either draw attention to the real group or to create a cash cow for this global multimillion dollar industry.

A more interesting premise would be to have the girls play unique and developing characters. If æspa were to use their music videos to establish intriguing characters, as a few other groups have done, it would give people more of a reason to tune in and interact with the virtual girls. Luckily, it seems that they might be alluding to some sort of story in the MY_KARINA teaser, and if that is true, I would really love to see SM push the boundaries with storytelling through original content and aespa’s music itself.

In the end, I am curious to see what the reactions from the global audience will be. Will the group struggle to get out of the gates with such a new concept? Or will this be the beginning of a revolutionary new era in K-Pop. No matter which way it goes, I am looking forward to people saying “Your bias is a robot!?”

Vol. XXXIX, Issue I 21