Investigate ‘fake AI’ audio clip claiming China KOL’s 100 millionth fan had an ‘affair’

BEIJING: China’s top-earning influencer Crazy Xiaoyangge has been embroiled in an alleged artificial intelligence “love affair” scandal.

Mainland police have launched an investigation into an audio clip allegedly featuring the drunken voice of Lu Wenqing, one of the three co-founders, apart from Xiaoyangge and his older twin brother Dayangge, of their company Three Sheep Group, which has been circulating on the Internet.

Lu reportedly says in the fake audio recording that he himself asked two female KOLs from the company, Qilaoban and Zhuo Shilin, to sleep with him.

He also allegedly claims that he can fire Xiaoyangge and his brother from the company whenever he wants, and is not thinking about Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, because “no one would buy stuff from Douyin if there were no Three Sheep”.

Douyin is the mainland version of TikTok, and Xiaoyangge’s platform, known in English as “Crazy Little Brother Yang,” has built his e-commerce empire and amassed more than 100 million followers.

Xiaoyangge, whose real name is Zhang Qingyang, has attracted fans with his “crazy” comic book selling style.

He bit his slippers and wiped his face with a mop during live broadcasts to test the product limit to attract more viewers and increase sales.

The list revealed at the Guangdong E-commerce Summit Forum showed it earned 3.21 billion yuan ($450 million) last year.

Xiaoyangge recently sparked backlash online for selling mooncakes that he falsely claimed were from Hong Kong.

They were actually manufactured by a company in the southern province of Guangdong, which is registered on the mainland and has never been sold in that city.

To make his claim sound more convincing, he even invited Hong Kong actor and TVB CEO Eric Tsang Chi-wai to appear on the live broadcast.

Neither Xiaoyangge nor Three Sheep responded when people learned that “Hong Kong Meisun mooncakes” did not come from the city.

On September 26, regulators in eastern China’s Anhui Province, where Three Sheep Group is headquartered, announced their decision to fine the company 68.95 million yuan ($9.6 million) under the Unfair Competition and Penalties Act administrative proceedings and ordered the company to suspend its operations in order to remove the defects.

The company apologized the same day.

Xiaoyangge recently had a falling out with Xinba, an e-commerce influencer on Douyin, who suggested in a live broadcast that he had an affair with an influential woman employed by Three Sheep Group.

This woman, Momo, was imprisoned for demanding a huge price to break up after their affair was revealed.

Online observers have noticed that Momo hasn’t posted anything since December last year.

Lu also reportedly admits that Momo was in prison in the fake audio clip.

Both influencers, Qilaoban with 8 million followers on Douyin and Zhuo Shilin with 12 million followers on the platform, denied any romantic relationship with Lu and said they would seek legal help to protect their reputations.

Dayangge’s wife also denied it, claiming that the audio clip was generated by artificial intelligence.

Her response prompted many influential people in artificial intelligence to analyze sound.

They claimed that the AI ​​was unable to produce a realistic drunk voice and was unable to generate the frequent swear words present in the audio clip.

Lu had not responded as of writing. – Morning mail from southern China