Zhao Liying is shocked that her face was stolen while filming! I couldn't bear the anger and filed a lawsuit. The list of complaints actually showed the "parent company of Douyin"

Chinese actress Zhao Liying was dissatisfied with the short drama platform's use of AI technology to "steal her face" in her portrait. She filed a lawsuit in court. Even companies related to ByteDance, the parent company of Douyin behind the platform, were named as defendants. The news shocked the entertainment industry. According to public information from the Chinese corporate credit reporting platform "Qi Cha Cha", Zhao Liying sued the operator of the Hongguo short drama app "Beijing Bimo Liuxiang Technology Co., Ltd.", its wholly-owned shareholder "Beijing Douyin Information Service Co., Ltd." and a natural person named Shi on the grounds of "dispute over portrait rights." The case was heard in the cloud court of the Mentougou District People's Court of Beijing on November 10, and a verdict has not yet been announced.

Zhao Liying's face actually "performed" a skit without her knowledge. (Photo taken from Weibo)

Zhao Liying accused that some works on the Hongguo short drama platform were unauthorized, using AI face-changing and face-melting technology to capture their facial features and directly synthesize them into short drama characters, and even stole photos to make covers to attract attention and monetize. In other words, although the audience saw Zhao Liying's face in the play, she never signed a contract, received no pay, and did not even know that this work existed.

Zhao Liying's lawsuit requests include ordering the defendant to stop producing and selling the infringing products involved in the case, completely stop infringement activities, make a public apology, and compensate for economic losses and reasonable rights protection expenses totaling 810,000 yuan (approximately NT$3.64 million). However, other Chinese media pointed out that the compensation amount may stem from another portrait or reputation infringement case involving Zhao Liying. The connection with the Hongguo short drama case has yet to be confirmed. The court announcement did not clearly list the specific compensation figure.

Hongguo short drama has a huge scale in China's short drama market, with monthly active users exceeding 212 million, even surpassing established audio and video platforms such as Youku. Its operating entity is wholly owned by Douyin Information Services, which means that this lawsuit not only brought a lawsuit against the short drama platform, but also the Douyin-related companies behind it.

Zhao Liying was dissatisfied with the short drama platform's use of AI technology to "steal faces" in her portrait, and she filed a lawsuit in court. (Photo taken from Weibo)

It is worth noting that Hongguo Short Play has claimed in the past that it is strictly controlling the content on the platform, and even conducted a "spring cleaning" to inspect 15,000 works and remove 670 illegal content from the shelves. However, Zhao Liying's case is still in court, which shows that the platform's censorship speed seems to be completely unable to keep up with the production of infringing content.

In fact, AI face-changing infringement is nothing new in the short drama industry. Big celebrities including Yi Yang Qianxi, Zhang Jingyi, Yang Zi, etc. have all reported that their portraits have been improperly used by short drama platforms. With the lowering of technical barriers, it is almost zero cost to crawl public images, extract facial features and synthesize them into dramatic characters. For the short drama industry that pursues high output speed, portrait rights and regulatory defenses are often the first to be forgotten.