Why an AI Actor on Cosmopolitan China’s Cover Is Drawing Backlash

An entirely fictional person is now landing very real celebrity opportunities.

On Aug. 27, Cosmopolitan China unveiled a Cosmo Crush cover featuring AI actor Fang Taozi. It is only the cover of a digital spin-off, and the magazine has long since lost its claim to being one of China’s “Big Five” fashion titles following copyright controversies and a decline in content quality. None of that, however, made the cover any less contentious.

The backlash was swift. Social media users made little attempt to hide their distaste for the project, with some sarcastically tagging ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Doubao and other AI services, suggesting that if AI was going to be on the cover, AI might as well buy the magazine too. Cosmopolitan China has since hidden the comments section on these Weibo posts.

Fang Taozi is the protagonist of the AI-generated short drama “The Girl Who Got Laid Off,” which premiered in June and had surpassed 360 million views by August. Fang has been managed much like a real actor since the show’s launch. Since June, she has been posting on her own Douyin account, which now has nearly 550,000 followers, sharing glimpses of her supposed “daily life” and taking on commercial partnerships. Data showed that her quoted rate for videos longer than 60 seconds once reached 258,000 yuan (about $36,300).

And that is precisely what people find so unsettling: everything about her is fake, yet the fame, opportunities and resources she receives are very real — and what she gains may come at the expense of real people.

The most immediate controversy centers on her face, whose features have reminded viewers of several real-life celebrities, including Nana Komatsu and Minji. There is no evidence that Fang’s creators used the likenesses of these celebrities or infringed on their rights. Still, a face that seems to resemble several different people — and whose appearance is not entirely consistent because it is AI-generated — inevitably makes some viewers uncomfortable.

One social media comment captured an even more ironic aspect of the controversy, deliberately echoing the title of Fang’s own show: “How many real girls will end up getting laid off because of one person who doesn’t even exist?”

A conventional fashion shoot depends on a whole team of people, from stylists and makeup artists to photographers, lighting crews, location teams and the model. The use of generative AI means many of those jobs could be drastically reduced or disappear altogether.

Cosmopolitan’s attempt to give Fang a human narrative has only intensified the backlash. Its promotional copy repeatedly invokes ideas of the “self,” describing how she “gets back on her feet amid confusion, helplessness and loss” and “lives a life that isn’t virtual in a virtual world,” effectively portraying her as a human being with emotions and a personal journey.

Applied to an AI-generated person, such language comes across as strangely absurd. Users were quick to say so: “This person literally doesn’t exist. What does a fake person have to be confused about?” “AI has emotions?” And: “Does AI even have a self? And you’re still talking about a ‘stage of her own.’ Has the creative team lost it?”

Virtual figures are, of course, nothing new to fashion. Questions about “stealing” the benefits of diversity, lacking a real personality and being unable to experience the things they portray have followed them for years. But earlier virtual figures such as Noonoouri and Lil Miquela were characters designed by real people. They were closer to a limited number of digital artworks, still requiring substantial human creative input, and the line separating them from real people was relatively clear.

Generative AI figures are different. They can be produced in large numbers at very low cost, with far less human creative input behind them. Their sense of realism comes from combining and recombining the appearance, voices, behavior and personalities of real people. And now these creations are beginning to interact with the world as if they were real human beings — even encroaching on the space real people depend on to make a living.

Almost anything can now be made with AI. That does not mean consumers will pay for all of it.