So, yesterdayish, a post announcing the launch of OpenAI in Korea started making the rounds online. This post also said that one of the creators of the song “Soda Pop” from KPop Demon Hunters had asked ChatGPT for advice on how to make it “more bubbly” while writing it.
…A lot of the fandom imploded over it—largely with outrage and disgust, which helped a tiny bit of the sting, because at least I wasn’t alone in my dismay—myself very much included.
Mine was a fairly quiet implosion.
I might’ve heard a little piece of my heart crack ominously, like ice, at the idea that one of my favorite pieces of media of all time might be tainted by cheaters using stolen work. 🥲
I thought, said, and posted things like, “I feel nauseous and betrayed” and “how miserably appropriate that we find out the demon boy bands’ songs actually are made from stealing the souls’ work of actual artists.”
A lot of other fans imploded in a different way—almost like they were embarrassed, and trying to distance themselves from their previous unbridled enthusiasm for the movie. I saw lots of posts and comments to the effect of “I always thought that song seemed soulless”, or “I never liked that one”, or “I didn’t get the hype anyway”, or “always was a vapid song”, or “I always hated that earworm.”
I…do not have the ability to turn on a dime like that. 😬🤷🏻♀️
Much as I’d like to drop anything that might have a chance of genAI bot-rot slop in it, much as I’d swear I heard my heart crack at the idea that my favorite movie might be tainted with it, I can’t pretend for a second that I don’t think the movie and the songs in it didn’t all do a fantastic job at what they set out to do.
Because look, the thing is, yeah, “Soda Pop” is kind of shallow, poppy, earworm crap.
…it’s also very clearly that on purpose.
I can’t listen to a song and enjoy it without looking up and drilling down into the lyrics—with a background in both anthropology and poetry, that sort of thing is my jam.
And the thing is, for what it is and what it’s trying to do, “Soda Pop” is perfect.
Like with “Your Idol”, the Saja Boys’ songs embody a lot of the most toxic aspects of “traditional” relationships, and the lyrics of both are straight up portraits of abusive codependency.
I didn’t mind that “Soda Pop” was a little insipid, that’s the point—it’s satire of the gross and weirdly dehumanizing songs aimed at girls that boy bands have been churning out since they came into existence. (ex: that deeply creepy One Direction song with “you don’t KNOW you’re beautiful, that’s what MAKES you beautiful” ie “hey girl, your low self esteem is what makes you attractive to me, so definitely don’t develop or display any confidence in yourself!” 🤢)
I don’t love the song as a song, it’s literally about wanting to consume your partner to sustain yourself, but as social commentary in musical form, I thought—and honestly, whether AI is really involved or not, I can’t stop thinking—that it was making a really insightful and self-aware joke (not a “ha ha” joke, a satirical joke about power dynamics, much like the minhwa pieces featuring the tiger and magpie were in their own time) about how soulless and predatory that whole pop scene often is/can easily be, to the point where, in the movie, literal demons can sing about wanting to consume the audience, and the audience doesn’t notice anything strange, just laps it up and thinks it’s the cutest thing ever.
The possibility that AI made its way into a movie that feels so cleverly, lovingly, and intricately handcrafted makes me feel sick, but I can’t just…act retroactively like I didn’t and don’t think it did a fantastic job at what it was trying to do. 🤷🏻♀️ I can’t pretend it didn’t absolutely slap as both a fun movie and an actual piece of meaningful art, even if admitting I love something that might’ve been created in ways that are fundamentally opposed to my moral compass feels gross and humiliating.
I went to bed last night with a heavy heart at the idea that somehow, these creators, whose so clearly lovingly-woven creation I adore so much, used AI (and therefore stolen work from other creators) to make the movie.
I’ve watched it literally hundreds of times now; I have spent hours looking up new little facets of things I notice in it each time, things that turn out to have cultural significance, in a way that teaches me things when I go to look them up.
The level of attention to detail, the loving intricacy, all the layers of ancient and pop culture, in this movie are so impressive—I kept thinking that it feels too human for AI to have touched much of it, but the nauseating question lingered in my head: if one songwriter on the team used it, where else did genAI creep in? What else in this work did it taint?
Eventually, I slept.
…and then I woke up today to find out that the whole thing was likely entirely a hoax. 🤪
It was seemingly based on either an accidental mistranslation of an article or an intentional one to get more hype for AI in Korea—the situation isn’t entirely clear yet. 🤷🏻♀️
I definitely breathed a sigh of relief anyway.
But a part of me also still worries that, even if this one thing wasn’t true, we’ll find out that genAI did taint some other part of it, or that the idea of it being a hoax will turn out, itself, to be a hoax. 😬😓
My trust feels once-bitten; a seed of worry has been planted.
My comfort movie is no longer quite as comfortable—and probably never will be again, at least unless the creators come forward with a formal statement that genAI wasn’t used.
I spiraled a little when I realized that we’re likely never going to get to take in and enjoy a piece of art again without having to second-guess if it’s actual art from actual people, or if it’s slop made of stolen art from thousands of people, chewed up and spat out in our faces.
I hope more movies start taking a stand and including the “no generative AI was used in the making of this film” thing in their credits. Knowing no artists were stolen from in the making of something matters.
I have come to accept that, at least in this instance, I probably can’t know for sure. 😮💨
Maybe they did ask ChatGPT how to make the song “sound more bubbly”; I don’t have proof one way or the other.
But what I can do, and have done over the last few months, is read a decent bit into the background of a lot of the people who worked on this movie, and about the fact that many of them have been waiting a very long time to be able to make this movie—to have the platform, the tools, and be given the chance to say what they wanted to say and show what they wanted to show.
The thing is, I sincerely cannot imagine THAT team—
The team who spent like 4 years crafting this movie (and however many before that dreaming up the things that eventually became this movie), this fantasy that is an absolute love song and homage to Korean culture as what it is in the now, both full of meaningful ancient heritage and simultaneously on the cutting edge of so many things, from tech to pop music—
This piece of absolute art that says, like an adult child to a grandparent, “I love you so much, and this is not to hurt or disrespect you, but some old traditions and expectations, especially how we handle things like fear and shame, have to change as we grow and change”—
The team that understood their industry and audience so well that the Saja Boys’ songs from it have even taken off in real life in the same order as they did in the movie, with “Soda Pop” luring a lot of otherwise-disinterested folks in with its innocent poppy vibes first, and “Your Idol” sealing the deal with its own diabolically insightful appeal later—
The team that designed intricate norigae for each of the HUNTR/X girls to reflect their personalities, and gave each of them a different, historically and spiritually significant, demon-fighting weapon; who bothered to give each Saja Boy a different type of shoe that reflects their personas in the “Your Idol” scene; who have talked in interviews about the fact that they actually bothered to make sure to capture distinctly Korean facial expressions, especially mouth movements, as well as subtle linguistic mismatches, that are specifically created by speaking Korean as a first language—
I cannot imagine THAT team being like, “oh, actually, yeah, let’s let the robotic theft machine make our masterpiece instead.” 😒
That feels…ridiculous. 🤷🏻♀️
The level of attention to detail, the loving intricacy, all the layers of ancient and pop culture, in this movie…it feels too human for AI to have touched much of it. It would be such a waste—of all their skills, and of the opportunity.
Moreover, it would be an admission from every artist who used it that they didn’t have the skill or dedication to actually make the art they worked so hard to get a chance to make.
If a couple people who worked on it ran a question or two about it past ChatGPT, or used another of the thievery machines in some way, that sincerely sucks. I hope they didn’t.
But even if a few did, it still feels to me like all the fundamental and meaningful parts of this creation were made by actual human beings expressing things about their cultures, lives, and experiences. If any bot-rot did touch it, it could, at most, have only done so on a superficial level, once its substance was already well-formed.
So, I can’t know if some of the folks working on it were slimy lil art thieves, no—but I can and do know that the core creation that I love has been in the works since before the genAI bot-rot boom, and the team who made it did so because they spent their lives actively wanting to make art and tell meaningful stories.
To me, that suggests that a hefty majority of those people—who made it to where they are in their fields before genAI was available, btw (and therefore likely had to spend years actually developing and refining their creative skills instead of pretending that entering a prompt is a creative skill—are not going to have wasted finally having a platform to express themselves and tell their story by just giving that opportunity away to an incompetent art theft machine instead.
Maybe we’ll find out otherwise, but. 🤷🏻♀️ Call me an optimist. 😮💨🤞🏻✨
Alena Indigo Anne Sullivan 