Recently, SM Entertainment announced the official launch of their rookie girl group aespa and started to heat up the atmosphere by dropping their content one by one. What caught the most attention was the groupŌĆÖs unique storytelling. According to Lee Soo Man, aespa will be an 8-member group, where 4 are actual members and the other 4 are avatars. However, more people started to show concerns over aespaŌĆÖs concept as the video created by K-Pop idol trainer In Ji Woong grabbed attention. In his video, In pointed out a total of three problems. The first is that the quality of graphic design is not excellent. The second is that aespa is introduced when SM lost the trust of its fans due to a series of recent controversies. He then emphasized the third ŌĆō a problem that occurs when idols and AI virtual characters are combined into one. In Ji Woong mentioned the problems that can arise when using people as character IPs, and that is a vast amount of secondary creations. He then used K/DA as an example. If you search the group, you will get sexually explicit photos or videos on various websites. In said, ŌĆ£So far, the content created using idols were just novels or fan-fictions. But if they create avatars out of these idols, then they are asking for trouble.ŌĆØ He also pointed out, ŌĆ£Idols are also humans, and they have feelings. Imagine a character that was inspired by me was being used all over the internet for secondary creations. Do you think aespa members, who are younger than 20 years old on average, will be able to endure this?ŌĆØ He bitterly added, ŌĆ£IŌĆÖm sure SM knows about this. But the fact that they are still going with this concept just proves that they donŌĆÖt see idols as humans but just a way to earn money.ŌĆØ Source (1)
