T.O.P (Big Bang) recently has posted a deep-fake video of his face edited on BLACKPINK’s video, drawing attention from the netizens.
On July 20th, T.O.P posted a video on his Instagram to update his latest situation. The video was an edited video that synthesized the face of T.O.P in the MV of BLACKPINK‘s new song “How You Like That” using deepfake technology. Instead of the faces of BLACKPINK members Jisoo, Jenny, Rose and Lisa, T.O.P’s face was synthesized, which is drawing attention from the netizens.
However, Korean netizens are not happy to see this. Deepfake refers to an editing technology that synthesizes the face of a certain person into a specific video using AI, which has recently been abused as a digital sex crime that inserts a celebrity’s face into porn videos, sparking great controversy.
In particular, the netizens were somewhat opposed to the deep-fake videos, as many cases of crimes were found in Korea. The netizens commented on T.O.P’s post: “What are you doing to BLACKPINK?”, “It’s a problematic technology, and it’s really disgusting to see.”, “It’s creepy, foreign fans please stop using deepfake.” “What is this…? I can’t believe he posted it himself.”
However, some responded favorably, saying that BLACKPINK and Big Bang’s T.O.P. are in the same company YG Entertainment and they have close senior and junior relationship and that it was uploaded as a joke: “That’s amazing. How did you do that?” “When will T.O.P’s album come out?”, “It’s funny,” and “Isn’t it just like a vine video?”
Meanwhile, T.O.P. joined the military as a policeman in 2017 but was relieved of his position on charges of drug use. Since then, he has replaced his military service as a social service worker. T.O.P was indicted on charges of smoking marijuana at his home in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, in 2016 and was sentenced to two years in probation and 12 million won in fines.
T.O.P. has not been active since he was discharged. Although he mentioned retirement from the entertainment industry, he reversed his decision and was scheduled to make a comeback at the “Coachella Valley Music Festival 2020” with Big Bang but the stage was canceled due to Covid-19.
