LayarHijau – An actress who appears in commercials in Beijing has become embroiled in a dispute with the producer of an AI drama after claiming that her face may have been used without permission as the model for one of its main characters. She asked the production company to provide evidence showing that her face was not used in the character creation process.
The production company denied the allegation. The dispute later escalated into a legal battle after the company sued Feng over what it described as damage to its reputation.
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Feng first noticed the character she believed looked remarkably similar to her on the night of July 24. She was watching an AI drama on a short-video platform posted by an account called “Daylight and Eggplant.”
Feng said she immediately noticed the resemblance because her work as a commercial actress has made her particularly sensitive to facial features and proportions.
“The shape around the corners of the mouth, the sides of the nose, the ears, the shape of the face and so on are all very similar,” Feng told Jimu News in an interview on August 12.
One particular detail made her even more suspicious. In one scene, several strands of hair fall across the female character’s face. Feng said the angle of the hair looked remarkably similar to the way her hair appeared in a personal photo she had posted around two years earlier.
“There were several strands of hair falling across the main character’s face in one scene. I felt the angle was exactly the same as the hair in a set of photos I posted two years ago,” she said.
In the early hours of July 25, Feng sent a private message to the account that posted the drama, asking about the origin of the character’s appearance. She received no response.
A few days later, Feng checked the account again and noticed that it had added an MCN affiliation. She then learned that the AI drama was produced by OST Media.
Feng decided to check whether anyone she knew worked for the company. She had several contacts in the media industry on WeChat and happened to find an OST Media employee who had been in her contacts for some time after they had connected through work.
That coincidence made Feng even more suspicious. She knew the employee already had her WeChat contact and had been able to see personal photos she posted on her WeChat Moments. At the same time, the employee’s company had produced an AI drama featuring a female lead whose face Feng believed strongly resembled her own.
“How could it be such a coincidence that this person had my WeChat and had seen my photos, while the company they worked for produced an AI drama with a lead character whose face looked like mine?” Feng recalled thinking.
She then contacted the employee to ask whether her face had been used.
The company denied it. In screenshots of their conversation provided by Feng, the employee said the company had hundreds of performers, most of whom had already signed agreements allowing their likenesses to be used for AI-related purposes.
“The company has hundreds of performers, and most of them have signed AI likeness authorization agreements. There’s no reason for us to use the face of a stranger,” the employee reportedly said.
When the two sides failed to reach an understanding, the employee created a group chat involving Feng, the company’s legal department and other relevant parties to discuss the matter.
During the discussion, Feng asked the production company to provide evidence about how the character had been created, including the original prompts used to generate the AI images.
The request was rejected.
The company instead provided Feng with two digital copyright identification documents. Feng argued that the documents only established the company’s ownership of the work and did not answer the question she was trying to verify: whether her face had actually been used during the character-generation process.
After the dispute again failed to produce an agreement, Feng posted a video explaining the issue publicly. She also reported the AI drama to the platform, alleging that her face had been used without permission.
The production side then reported Feng’s video to the platform.
Neither report succeeded. Both sides’ videos remain available to viewers.
Producer Denies Using Feng’s Face
The dispute continued to gain attention online. The “Daylight and Eggplant” account temporarily added a statement to its profile saying that the character-generation workflow had already been submitted to the platform for review and that no infringement or violation had been found.
The account also said the characters in the drama had received copyright certification.
The debate soon spread through the comments. Some users said the female character did look like Feng, while others questioned whether facial resemblance alone could prove that Feng’s face had actually been used as source material during the AI generation process.
Feng said the online debate left her deeply unsettled.
“When I saw everyone arguing about whether we looked alike, I was really shaken. Suddenly, I didn’t even know what my own face looked like anymore,” she said.
Feng believes she should not be required to prove whether her face was used. In her view, the production company, which had access to the character-generation process, should be able to provide evidence showing how the character was created.
She also rejected accusations that she was deliberately trying to gain publicity by making the allegation.
Feng said she noticed the issue on the very night the drama was released and contacted the account in the early hours of the following day, when the drama was not yet particularly popular.
She acknowledged that the difficult state of the advertising industry had prompted her to look for additional work through short-form videos. However, she insisted that she was still just an ordinary performer and did not want to gain followers or become famous through such a controversy.
In her view, popularity gained that way would not last.
AI Drama Creator Denies Knowing Feng
As the controversy grew, Jimu News contacted a person surnamed Li who was responsible for the drama.
On August 18, Li said, after consulting with the company, that they were not in a position to comment publicly at that time.
Before that, however, the “Daylight and Eggplant” account had announced that further clarification would be provided through a personal account called “Daylight.”
In her statement, Daylight rejected Feng’s allegations in full.
Asked specifically about Feng’s claim that her face had been incorporated into the AI character, Daylight gave a firm response.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
Daylight explained that she was responsible for content and had created the AI drama together with another woman. Daylight handled the AI image-generation process, while her colleague was responsible for post-production editing.
She also said that she did not know Feng, had never added her on WeChat and had never seen Feng’s photos on WeChat Moments.
According to Daylight, the person who had previously communicated with Feng was an artist manager from the company’s talent-management department. That employee worked in a different department and had almost no work-related contact with Daylight.
When asked why the company would not publicly show the workflow used to create the AI character, Daylight said the material was confidential company information. As an employee, she did not have the authority to disclose it.
She said the company had instead submitted the workflow to the platform for official review. According to Daylight, the platform found no violation after reviewing the material, allowing the drama to remain online.
Producer Sues Feng Over Alleged Defamation
In her response, Daylight also posted a case filing document and a statement from the company’s lawyer.
The filing showed that the company had initiated legal proceedings against Feng at the First Chengdu Railway Transportation Court over the dispute.
The company’s lawyer said Feng’s actions had damaged the company’s reputation.
The production company also announced that the female character at the center of the controversy would no longer appear in subsequent episodes. According to the company, the character had become associated with a significant amount of negative controversy.
The character was subsequently replaced.
On August 14, the AI drama released a new episode for the first time since the facial resemblance controversy intensified. The female character involved in the dispute had been given a new facial model.
The drama had reached its sixth episode as of the report.
Feng Receives Court Notice
The latest development came on August 28, when Feng told Jimu News that she had received a notice from the court.
She confirmed that the production company had sued her over alleged damage to its reputation. However, Feng said the company had still not provided data relating to how the disputed character’s face was created.
She said she would leave the legal proceedings to her lawyer.
“I didn’t insult or defame them. From beginning to end, I was simply exercising my rights in a normal manner. I don’t believe I damaged their reputation,” Feng said.
She explained that she posted the video not simply to argue over whether the AI character looked like her, but also to draw attention to a broader issue that could emerge as AI dramas become increasingly common.
In particular, she is concerned about the use of ordinary people’s faces in AI-generated works.
“If a face like this is recreated and used for something inappropriate, how is the person involved supposed to explain that the character isn’t them?” she said.
Feng said she would continue to pursue the matter through legal channels regardless of the eventual outcome or how the public views her.
“I’ll do my best to fight for this. Whatever the result is, good or bad, and whatever people think of me, I accept it,” Feng said.
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