Thursday, June 23, 2011

Manufacturing pop stars

Does one of these girls seem a little... off?



The star of this candy spot is Aimi Eguchi, the newest member of Japanese teen pop group AKB 48. She fits in so well with her bandmates because she's more than one of them — she's all of them.

Singularity Hub explains:

"This past Sunday, Ezaki Glico, the candy company which aired the commercial, confirmed what many of AKB 48’s fans had come to suspect: Aimi Eguchi wasn’t real. The new group member, it turns out, was a computer-generated composite of the real band members. Her pretty face was actually made up of the “best features” of six other members: her eyes, nose, mouth, hair/body, face outline and eyebrows were not flesh-and-blood, but cut-and-paste."



This was done as a publicity stunt, and the sponsors quickly came clean with the hoax. But at the same time it's a timely reminder that you really can't believe your eyes anymore.

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