K-pop, Aespa, and AI
Is AI the future of K-pop? SM Entertainment certainly thinks so, with their latest girl group aespa infusing their music with AI.
Figure 1. aespa’s debut stage performance for ‘Black Mamba’
aespa arrived to the K-pop scene with flair, colour, and confidence in 2020. Its sound — that of noisy, electronic dance music, coupled with pop and rap — rivals powerhouses like ITZY and BLACKPINK, and provides fans with another exciting group to ‘stan’ (to show obsessive or extreme support for someone or something).
The 4-member group (8 if you include their AI counterparts as seen in Figure 1) is already making history this year despite their recent debut. They have already broken into the United States’ Billboard Charts and South Korea’s Gaon Album Chart,peaking at 1st place for both.
Indeed, aespa follows the successful path that other K-pop girl groups like TWICE, BLACKPINK, ITZY, and Red Velvet have walked on.
Its music, coupled with the occasional message of girl power have been done before. Its dancing and choreography — undoubtedly eye-catching — can only go so far in drawing interest. Its production value is top-notch but that is to be expected of K-pop groups that come from one of the ‘big 3’ K-pop entertainment agencies (I.e. SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment).
So what makes aespa unique?
The answer is AI.
aespa is more innovativethan your typical K-pop group, blending AI with real-life members as seen in Figure 1. Not only are the AI members shown in music videos, they are even given storylines.
The group’s lyrics, sound, set production, and videos also reflect a lore that separates aespa from the typical cookie-cutter K-pop group. Through a connection known as SYNK, aespa’s real-life members are able to interact with their AI counterparts (known as æ-aespa). But this connection is disrupted by an evil, serpent-like being called the Black Mamba, which aespa has to fight in order to reconnect with their AI counterparts.
Of course, this is merely a simplified version of a deeper lore. For more information, check out: https://tinyurl.com/ycyjw8yf (video explanation) and https://bit.ly/2ZlIQF (article).
Do people like the AI concept?
By analysing online comments, we can better understand the general consensus towards aespa’s AI.
In total, 2070 comments were analysed from 10 Reddit threads and 4 YouTube comments sections.
Figure 2. Sentiment Analysis of comments
As seen from Figure 2:
- Comments deemed positive: 1039 (50.2%)
- Comments deemed neutral: 611 (29.5%)
- Comments deemed negative: 420 (20.3%)
- Mean sentiment score is + 0.190.
Figure 3. Frequency of top 50 Positive Keywords
Positive keywords like “interesting”, “love”, “successful”, and “pretty” surfaced several times.
Notably, comparing Figure 3 to Figure 5, positive sentiments outweigh negative ones. E.g. the most frequent positive term ‘’love’’ (excluding terms like “neutral”, “sm”, “concept”, etc.) appeared 107 times, far more than the most frequent negative term ‘’mistake’’, which emerged only 61 times.
Figure 4. Frequency of top 50 Neutral Keywords
Expectedly, neutral keywords involved words like “aespa”, “concept”, and “members” as during discussions, netizens referenced such terms.
Figure 5. Frequency of top 50 Negative Keywords
Negative keywords like “hate”, “mistake”, “bad”, and even “weird” appeared several times. Unsurprisingly, some voiced clear distaste for aespa’s AI concept, criticising it harshly with such terms.
However, as seen in Figure 2, the negative sentiments are in the minority. The sentiment count reveals that the majority is still in favour of AI, with the overall sentiment score being +0.190.
But this data warrants further investigation. Curiously, those in favour of aespa’s use of AI barely make up the majority at 50.2% while a sizeable number of comments pose a neutral (29.5%) or negative stance (20.3%) towards the AI concept.
Further analysis of Keywords
Figure 6. Frequency of top Keywords
Based on Figure 6, we can see that the top keywords overall reveal a mostly positive or neutral perspective towards aespa. Some adopted a wait-and-see approach, not wanting to jump to any conclusions regarding aespa’s AI. Others praised aespa as a whole or complimented the AI concept.
However, it is notable that the keywords “mistake” and “hate” crept into the data. There is a negative streak amongst a vocal group of fans in both the Reddit and YouTube comments, with some stating that aespa’s implementation of AI is a ‘mistake’ for several reasons:
- Redundancy: Some netizens argued that SM Entertainment is wasting resources on AI. They adopted the mentality of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, pointing out how ironic it is that SM Entertainment is trying a new, arguably riskier approach for aespa despite K-pop groups succeeding without the need for AI.
- Personal Preference: Some netizens simply disliked the AI’s animation, finding it poorly produced and shoddy.
- Ethical repercussions: There was a theme of concern focusing on the ethical issues of implementing AI. Netizens spoke of how aespa’s AI characters would be bastardised and misused online.
Additionally, some netizens argued that the sexualisation of the AI members as well as their exaggerated body proportions will create problems for the real-life members.
The ethical repercussions is further emphasised through the analysis of the Reddit threads as seen below.
Figure 7. Top Keywords from Reddit
‘Waist’, ‘body’, ‘proportion’, and ‘sexualisation’ were mentioned several times. Some Redditors thought that the AI characters would create unrealistic beauty standards and be misused for pornography.
Others believed that aespa’s real-life members, who are already subjected to an extreme amount of scrutiny over their bodies and diet (as is the norm in the K-pop industry), will face mental strain by being compared to the virtual members’ dramatised physicalities (Figure 8).
Figure 8. aespa’s Winter with her AI Counterpart
Deepfakes of celebrities are already being used in pornographic content — K-pop idols included. It seems almost inevitable that the AI members will also be used for such questionable purposes, defiling aespa’s image resultantly.
Regardless, such concerns, once again, are in the minority (Figure 6). The majority — although not by an overwhelming amount — still holds a positive outlook towards aespa’s AI.
Entity Analysis
Figure 9. Frequency of persons/groups (*frequency of ‘k/da’ includes text spelled as ‘kda’)
Most of the data produced from the Entity Analysis is predictable — aespa’s members like ‘karina’ and ‘winter’ are mentioned, and aespa is compared to AI-related artists like ‘k/da’ (a virtual pop group that utilises the characters Ahri, Akali, Evelynn, and Kai’Sa from the video game League of Legends) and ‘hatsune miku’ (Japanese Vocaloid software that takes the form of a teenage girl).
Understandably, K/DA is mentioned 176 times, as K/DA was formed earlier than aespa and utilises AI characters as well. Hence, frequent comparisons are made between the two groups, with some netizens claiming that aespa is nothing more than a poor imitation of K/DA which debatably boasts better-animated AI characters.
But what separates aespa here is that aespa is even more ambitious, placing equal importance on both its AI characters and real-life members. While K/DA’s AI characters have different voices behind them at different points of time, aespa’s virtual members are fixed to their real-life counterparts.
After all, aespa’s AI characters are reflections of their real-life members. The spotlight is thus on both the virtual and real members, unlike K/DA.
Interestingly, the term ‘barbie’ is also present, suggesting two camps within the fanbase.
Some K-pop fans have used the term favourably towards the virtual and real-life members, suggesting that their aesthetic is barbie-esque, i.e. they are beautiful.
However, others have used it more derisively, stating that the AI members, similar to Barbie dolls, look fake, stiff, and poorly animated.
Summary Analysis
“, ‘I know SM would never do it but I wish they would make a show with the AE characters or at least a movie 🤣’, “I know they say that about every group that debuts but this time it’s different the timing is just not right I mean obviously they’ll forget about red velvet like they did with other groups for example EXO the boy group with the biggest fandom in SM not promoting them right and then investing their whole money on these new groups,SM is just becoming more and more thirsty for money I just wish EXO will change agency I know it’s hard but they’re powerful on their own as Key said growl built the whole new SM agency and Boa too built an agency and they’re already thinking about it they said it and if they leave they will stay together yes do it do it it’s time and leave SM with their new babies I never talked like that until now because they really pissed me off OMG another thing they sent Jongdae off I mean yes it’s for the good at least they will be able to have concerts without problems and time for those ungrateful fans to forget about it but he’s not gonna be able to spend enough time with his baby when she’s still a newborn and that pisses me off OMG this SM, what aespa my foot still not blaming the girls or other groups but SM only SM. So beautiful Karina ☺’, ‘I really like the irl idols in Aespa but, I think there AE concept is gonna be problematic smh‘, ‘i really love aespa and i think that concept are really cool’, ‘I really love red velvet so much i hope they dont disband’, ‘I really love the GROUP and the concept they are just diferent but, is something new you now ❤💖’, ‘I really need to stay away from negative videos like this. ‘, ‘Remember F(x) one of the First groups to pioneer the Bad GG concept, SNSD the Queens of Kpop still to this day, SHINee one of the first groups to do a Boyfriend style concept, as well as doing some of the first Hard and Difficult choreography in Kpop,’, “remember when everyone thought aespa would have their ae’s dance next to them at all times”, ‘remember when people used to hate their concept bcs they think that they ae stuff is weird and might harm the girls and now after the black mamba ep 1 they were all loving it, salute to those people who waited to know how does their concept really work instead of jumping to the conclusion of hating it’, ‘remember when we go crazy because they reveal the member in this video..yep time flies’, ‘reminds me of k/da’, ‘Reminds me of KDA’, “Reminds me of my childhood Winx Club and I’m living for it!!!
The summary analysis shows that only 1 negative comment was directed at aespa’s AI concept (highlighted in red). Contrastingly, the portions highlighted in orange are positive in nature.
Therefore, from a macro perspective, most fans are accepting of aespa’s AI concept. Despite strong criticisms, it is clear that detractors form the minority of the fanbase.
AI’s opportunity
aespa’s AI universe is just the beginning.
AI would not be implemented if it did not reap greater profits. With virtual members comes greater audience engagement. Currently, fans are already able to collect photocards of the virtual characters (Figure 10) and view them in music videos.
Figure 10. aespa’s photocard merchandise
Audience engagement can thus, in theory, be doubled. E.g. fans can support both Karina and æ-Karina (Figure 11).
Figure 11. aespa’s Karina talking to her virtual counterpart æ-Karina
And this is just the tip of the iceberg for fans.
Lee Soo Man, the founder of SM Entertainment, stated that: “After aespa’s debut, the real world members will carry out offline promotions just like any other SM artist, but outside of that, a new world becomes known – the virtual world – where the avatar members will also carry out various promotions. Within this one group, the two counterparts will carry out different promotions on/offline simultaneously, while also creating room to collaborate between the real world and virtual world.”
In the future, fans may hence be able to interact with the virtual members online or through video games; shows or movies can be created based on the AI universe (which SM Entertainment is already pursuing); more AI-related merchandise can be sold; audience engagement can be taken to new heights through Virtual Reality meetups; AI members, through holograms, can appear alongside real members to take live performances to the next level, etc.
Even if the aforementioned opportunities do not sound particularly amazing, it is still a breath of fresh air, differentiating aespa from other groups.
Ultimately, the AI concept is not slowing down aespa’ success. Instead, it is creating more publicity for the group and there are still more supporters of the concept than critics. In time, aespa will also be able to leverage the numerous creative opportunities that AI produces.
There is hence only one future that awaits aespa — more success.