A fake audio clip claims a popular Chinese KOL with 100 million followers had an affair with an influencer from his company. - Photo: SCMP composite/Douyin
BEIJING: China’s top-earning online influencer, Crazy Xiaoyangge has been caught up in an alleged artificial intelligence-generated “love affair” scandal.
Mainland police have launched an investigation into an audio clip that allegedly features the drunk voice of Lu Wenqing, one of the three co-founders besides Xiaoyangge and his elder twin brother Dayangge of their company Three Sheep Group, which has been circulating online.
Lu reportedly says in the fake audio clip he himself asked two women KOLs from the company, Qilaoban and Zhuo Shilin, to sleep with him.
He also allegedly says he could kick Xiaoyangge and his brother out of the company whenever he wanted, and thinks nothing of Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok parent company ByteDance, because “nobody would buy stuff from Douyin if Three Sheep weren’t here”.
Douyin is the mainland version of TikTok, and the platform Xiaoyangge, known in English as “Crazy Little Brother Yang”, built his e-commerce empire and amassed over 100 million followers.
Xiaoyangge, whose real name is Zhang Qingyang, attracted fans with his “crazy” comic sales style.
He used to bite slippers and use mops to wipe his face during live-stream events to test the limit of the products to attract more viewers and boost sales.
He earned 3.21 billion yuan (US$450 million) last year, according to a list revealed at the Guangdong E-commerce Summit Forum.
Xiaoyangge sparked an online backlash recently for selling mooncakes that he falsely claimed to be from Hong Kong.
They were actually made by a company in the southern province of Guangdong which is registered in the mainland and were never sold in the city.
To make his claim sound more convincing, he even invited Hong Kong actor and general manager of TVB Eric Tsang Chi-wai to appear on the live-stream.
Neither Xiaoyangge nor Three Sheep responded after people found out the “Hong Kong Meisun Mooncakes” were not from the city.
On September 26, regulators in eastern China’s Anhui province, where the Three Sheep Group is based, announced their decision to fine the company 68.95 million yuan (US$9.6 million) according to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and Administrative Punishment Law and ordered the company to suspend its business for rectification.
The company apologised on the same day.
Xiaoyangge recently got into an argument with a Douyin e-commerce influencer, Xinba, who hinted in a live-stream that he had been romantically involved with a woman influencer employed by the Three Sheep Group.
That woman, Momo, was sent to jail for demanding a huge break-up price after their affair was exposed.
Online observers then noticed Momo had not posted anything since December last year.
Lu also reportedly admits Momo was in jail in the fake audio clip.
The two influencers, Qilaoban, with 8 million followers on Douyin, and Zhuo Shilin, with 12 million followers on the platform, both denied any romantic involvement with Lu, and said they would seek legal help to protect their reputation.
Dayangge’s wife also issued a denial, claiming the audio clip was generated by AI.
Her response prompted many influencers who specialise in AI to analyse the audio.
They claimed that AI cannot produce a life-like drunken voice and is incapable of generating the frequent swear words present in the audio clip.
Lu did not respond by the time of writing. - South China Morning Post
