Starship Entertainment has posted an apology for sharing a deepfake photo of group I.B member Ahn Yu-jin.

On the 15th, Starship Entertainment (hereafter referred to as Starship) stated through their official SNS account, “We sincerely bow our heads in apology to Ahn Yu-jin and her fans who were deeply hurt by the serious negligence of our employee in charge of our Chinese SNS on the 9th.”

They continued, “This incident was confirmed to be a problem caused by our company‘s negligence in management, and we have taken the highest level of disciplinary action against the employee in question and excluded him from related work.” They added, “We will thoroughly reorganize our internal management system to prevent such an unfortunate incident from happening again.”

Starship continued, “We would like to express our sincere apologies to artist Ahn Yu-jin, and we promise to do our best to recover the damage caused by this.” They added, “We will not spread false information, defame, or slander related to our artist. The company is taking continuous legal action against such acts, and we will do our best to prevent further damage from spreading.”

Lastly, he promised, “We once again deeply apologize for the disappointment and concern that our fans may have felt, and we will take the lessons learned from this incident seriously and do our best to become a more mature company and regain trust.”

Earlier on the 9th, deepfake photos of An Yu-jin were shared on Ive’s official Chinese SNS Weibo account, leading to an outpouring of criticism from surprised fans. In particular, voices have grown louder calling for a fundamental solution to the situation in which malicious composite photos and rumors are continuously being spread, especially on Chinese SNS accounts.

Meanwhile, Ive, who is scheduled to make a comeback on February 3, released the pre-released title track ‘Rebel Heart’ of his new album ‘Ive Empathy’ on the 14th.

Reporter Lee Seul-bi, Donga.com misty82@donga.com