Chinese AI-generated drama accused of stealing faces
Christine Li is a model and influencer, but not an actor, so when she saw herself playing a cruel character in a Chinese microdrama she felt bewildered, then angry and afraid.
The 26-year-old is one of two people who told Agence France-Presse (AFP) their likenesses were cast without consent in the artificial intelligence (AI)-generated show “The Peach Blossom Hairpin,” which ran on Hongguo, a major microdrama app owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance.
Li plans to sue the drama makers and the platform, highlighting new legal and regulatory gray areas created by AI.
“I was genuinely shocked. It was clearly me,” said Li, who lives in Hangzhou in eastern China.
“It was so obvious that they used a specific set of photos I took two years ago” and had posted on social media, she said.
Ultrashort soap operas
Microdramas are ultrashort, online soap operas hugely popular in China and elsewhere.
When Li’s fans alerted her to the series, she was horrified to find her digital twin shown slapping women and mistreating animals.
“I also felt a deep fear. I kept wondering what kind of person would do something like this,” Li said.
Hongguo hosts thousands of free, bite-sized shows—both live-action and AI-generated—whose episodes are two or three minutes long.
As of October, the platform had around 245 million monthly active users, according to data cited by Wenwen Han, president of the Short Drama Alliance.
A Hongguo statement in early April said it had taken the series down because the producers had violated platform rules and contractual obligations.
AI’s ability to mimic real people has sparked global concern for actors’ jobs, and over such deepfakes being used for scams and propaganda.
Li and a man who says he was portrayed as her AI husband in the series, which became a hit last month on Hongguo, spoke out online about their separate unwelcome discoveries.
Public outcry
But even as their stories sparked a public outcry about AI ethics, AFP saw that “The Peach Blossom Hairpin” kept running for days before its removal, with the disputed characters quietly replaced.
To keep audiences hooked, microdramas are often full of shocking, larger-than-life moments.
For low-budget AI microdramas, Chinese regulations say platforms must be the primary checkpoint for potentially dodgy content.
If they do not carry out mandatory content reviews, the videos will be forcibly taken down, according to the National Radio and Television Administration.
