HYBE’s Virtual Girl Group SYNDI8 Faces Plagiarism Allegations “From Karina, Calm Down Man To The8”
In the current trend of rising popularity for virtual idols, HYBE has made waves with the debut of a virtual girl group
On June 27th, the virtual girl group “SYNDI8” released their debut album “MVP”.
“SYNDI8” is a virtual girl group produced by Supertone, an AI audio technology company acquired by HYBE. The name combines “SYNTHESIS” with the number “8”, representing the four members born from four voices.
Composed of four members—Canary, Nest, Goyo and Raven—SYNDI8 simultaneously released their debut album worldwide through domestic and international music platforms, along with an animated video showcasing the album’s message.
Recently, a post on SYNDI8’s official account sparked controversy on online communities and SNS.
The problematic post, uploaded on SYNDI8’s official X (formerly Twitter) on June 21st, introduced content from the chat-style novel game app “Storyplay: Interactive story”.
The post read, “‘It’s not SYNDI8, but Canary they want to recruit.’ Canary appears alone on ‘Neotube’ with 500,000 subscribers! At the request of Cholssakman who says the songs are really good, Canary ends up singing five songs in a row…?!“
An image resembling a YouTube thumbnail was also released with the post.
Netizens pointed out that the names SYNDI8 and Canary, along with the 500,000-subscriber YouTuber referred to as “Cholssakman” reminded them of well-known personalities.
Additionally, Cholssakman drew comparisons to Calm Down Man, a webtoon artist and YouTuber.
The controversy intensified as the bearded image of Cholssakman in the post closely resembled the real appearance of Calm Down Man.
Some netizens criticized, “As soon as I heard the group name, I thought of Seventeen“, “Did they have to make it so similar?“, “Did they get permission from Calm Down Man?” and “It’s too identical.“
On the other hand, some defended the post, “Can’t they even do this level of parody?” and “Isn’t it something we can just laugh off?“
