The new face of Korean advertising has no private life to lose
From web dramas to fashion campaigns, virtual faces are spreading quickly in Korean media as production companies and brands chase lower costs and fewer risks.
A scene from resort chain High1 Resort's YouTube web romance drama series, “I Was Tamed by the Daylily Bride” (translated), featuring an AI-generated actor.SCREEN CAPTURE
A new web romance drama series “I Was Tamed by the Daylily Bride” (translated), hit YouTube last month, with the first two episodes combined drawing more than a million views.
Many watching the show have pointed out the attractiveness of the lead actors, with one commenter calling their faces “divinely made.” That's not entirely off the mark — they are were in fact “made,” but by AI rather than any spiritual power.
AI-generated models have become the advertising industry's newest tool, with virtual faces as perfect as any celebrity's and no private life to go wrong.
In the drama, which is sponsored by resort chain High1 Resort, the male lead is a Western fantasy character billed as a grand duke of the north, a stock hero of Korean romance web novels. He plays opposite a hero who falls for him at one of the resorts. Both hero and hero are AI-generated actors.
Fashion labels are also quickly adopting the practice, because an AI model can be built to whatever face and body a brand wants, and transformed into whatever mix of ages and genders a customer base would best respond to.
Shinsegae Tomboy's VOV label uses an AI model called Vittoria. Not to be outdone, LF's Hazzys has introduced a total of 12 AI models for the 2026 fall-winter season. They include Black, white and Asian faces of both men and women, ranging in age from children to older adults.
“You cut the billions of won a sought-after model asks for, and you are relatively free of portrait rights problems,” a marketing planner said. “They are not even fussy about shooting conditions or hours.”
A promotional poster introducing fashion brand Hazzys' AI models.LF HAZZYS, SHINSEGAE INTERNATIONAL
A decisive advantage is that a virtual model cannot be caught up in a scandal. That is why the modeling business is often named as one of the fields that AI has hit the hardest.
Advertisers have had a run of unwelcome surprises from celebrity endorsers, with the disclosure that actor Jung Woo-sung fathered a child outside of marriage just a recent example. When a campaign gets dragged into such controversies, the two sides tend to end up involved in a lengthy damages suit, and the brand rarely walks away whole.
AI avatars sell, but accountability still key
It's not just AI actors passing off as human that are being used to drive sales — characters that are obviously virtual are also part of the action.
In January, convenience store chain GS25 put out 11 breads, snacks, chocolates and bar snacks “endorsed” by virtual boy band Plave, and has since sold more than 1.3 million of them. Plave, Korea’s top-selling virtual group, comprises 2-D avatars perform in real time, using motion-capture technology to mirror the movements of the performing members behind them.
Lotte Mart, which released a successful collaboration between Pepero and Plave in 2024, has since moved on to the virtual girl group StelLive as of last year. A Couque D'asse biscuit snack tie-in with them launched in September of last year sold out only three minutes after going online, and a Heim tie-in last December outsold the usual monthly figures for Choco Heim and White Heim wafers by more than five times. Milkis and Butter Waffle versions followed this June.
From left: A promotional poster for virtual girl group StelLive's collaboration with Lotte Mart's White Heim and Choco Heim confectionaries; Convenience store GS25's collaboration with virtual idol PlaveLOTTE MART, GS25
MarketsandMarkets, a research firm, expects the market for AI avatars used in industry, retail and entertainment to grow from $800 million in 2025 to $5.93 billion in 2032, a compound annual growth rate of 33.1 percent.
“An AI model is attractive to a smaller company that cannot carry a fee [for an established human celebrity] running to hundreds of millions of won, so this can spread down to small businesses,” Lee Eun-hee, a professor of consumer studies at Inha University, said.
“But because there is no actual person, there is no accountability for the message the figure delivers and a high chance of deceptive advertising, which makes compliance with AI labeling essential.”
The Fair Trade Commission has revised its review guidelines on endorsement advertising, and since June any ad in which an AI-generated figure recommends or endorses a product has had to identify that figure as virtual.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
