Stock tips with a beat: Samsung Securities' AI K-pop group racks up views

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SEOUL, Nov 12 : Stock brokerage Samsung Securities has found brand ambassadors who never skip rehearsal and are unlikely to make tabloid headlines: a four-member, AI-generated K-pop girl group called LUMINA. 

The band's debut music video, "Override", passed 3 million YouTube views about five weeks after release. 

Finding presenters for its social media channels was hard, said Uhm Sewon, head of the brokerage's media strategy team. Staff experts were novices on camera, while celebrities were costly and might not suit the brand. 

"We make about 1,500 pieces of content a year, and finding people to appear in them is really not easy," Uhm told Reuters. 

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Beyond human planning, Samsung Securities' team made the song, characters and video all with AI. Rapidly improving tools have made LUMINA's dance moves look far more natural, Uhm said. 

Samsung Securities has not registered copyright in the song, and as a brokerage is not registered to earn revenue from music, Uhm said.

Under South Korean government guidelines, music generated entirely by AI with no human creative input cannot be registered for copyright.

To maintain investors' trust, Samsung Securities labels the characters as "fictional" in prominent block letters, and has finance-related content checked by in-house specialists in about three stages. 

"We make clear that they are AI characters, and we produce content only from material that internal experts have verified for accuracy," Uhm said. 

Comments below the music video range from "This song is addictive" and "Why is this so natural" to "This beats actual idol groups". 

Uhm said it was difficult to quantify measurable returns for its securities business yet, because it was LUMINA's first music video. She said previous Samsung Securities content that combined customer events with YouTube videos attracted more visitors than standalone events, suggesting there would be a positive impact over the longer term. 

Next up are a performance video, a follow-up song, member interviews, short-form challenges, investor education videos hosted by the group, and glimpses of the members' daily lives, Uhm said. 

AN UNSTOPPABLE TREND

Park Sang-cheol, chairman of the Korea Singers Association and a veteran performer, said AI was an unstoppable trend and could benefit artists by cutting production costs and helping singers practise new songs. 

However, he warned that AI could hit corporate modelling work, session musicians, songwriters and arrangers hard, with AI-generated likenesses and mass-uploaded AI songs a threat to creators' rights. Park said there was a need to monitor developments closely and put policy safeguards in place.

"AI music sounds really good at first, but it has a colour of its own, and the more you listen, the more tiresome it gets," he told Reuters.

"That's why live performance has its own flavour – a singer's own colour, even the mistakes. Hearing exactly the same music every single time can become irritating. A singer can talk to the audience, put on events and interact with them, and I don't think AI can replace that."

South Korea ranked 12th in the world in generative AI use, posting the largest quarterly increase among major economies for the third consecutive time, according to Microsoft's AI Economy Institute in September. 

Virtual K-pop is not new. In 2023, Netmarble's affiliate launched girl band MAVE:, made up of four virtual avatars, with voices provided by human performers. Virtual boy band PLAVE is portrayed by human performers in real time through motion capture. 

However, Samsung Securities' LUMINA is entirely AI-generated.  

AI is already gatecrashing South Korean music charts. "The Adult I Dreamed Of" by MEOMURU topped multiple South Korean music charts in September and October. A human wrote the lyrics and directed production, but the vocals were generated with the AI program Suno.

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