Starship Entertainment has released a second apology regarding the "accidental" posting of inappropriate IVE deepfake content on the group's Weibo account.
On January 9, the agency was at the center of a controversy after a staff member controlling IVE's Weibo account shared an inappropriate deepfake post of IVE. The deepfake post involved an image of sexual deepfake content of member An Yu Jin.
The label immediately issued an apology but received much backlash. Starship Entertainment gave an explanation stating, "This incident occurred during the process of reporting a malicious post, and the post has since been deleted." Fans believed the apology lacked sincerity and were unable to accept the account of how the image was shared.
As criticism grew, Starship Entertainment released a new apology on January 15.
Starship Entertainment wrote:
"Hello, this is Starship Entertainment.
We sincerely bow our heads and apologize to our artist An Yu Jin and her fans, who must have been deeply hurt by the serious mistake made by one of our staff members in charge of our Chinese social media accounts on January 9.
We have confirmed that this incident was caused by our lack of oversight and management. As a result, the staff member in question has received the highest level of disciplinary action and has been removed from related duties.
Additionally, we will thoroughly reinforce our internal management system to ensure that such unfortunate incidents never happen again.
We also extend our heartfelt apologies to An Yu Jin and promise to do our utmost to recover from the damage caused by this issue. We will continue to take strict legal action against the spread of false information, defamatory remarks, and related malicious behavior to prevent any further harm.
Once again, we deeply apologize for the disappointment and concern this incident has caused our fans. We take the lessons learned from this incident very seriously and will strive to become a more responsible company, dedicated to regaining your trust."
Fans were satisfied with the latest apology and commented:
"Sigh... finally."
"They released this apology so quickly!"
"They should've fired that employee."
"Finally. Protect An Yu Jin."
"This is the type of apology they should've released first."
"What's with that staff member?"
"Please do better Starship."
"This is the first time I found out about this incident but are they crazy?"
"I can't believe they're releasing an apology now."
"This is a serious issue. They need to fire that employee."
"What's the highest disciplinary action? They should be fired."
"Why did they take so long to release an apology?"
"They shared that deepfake image because they thought it was real? That's so crazy."
"Omg."
"Fans were so disappointed and hurt by this incident... Protect Yu Jin."
"Please fire that employee who made the mistake."
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