Esquire Singapore under fire for using AI to create ‘interview’ with Mackenyu

SINGAPORE: Esquire Singapore has been the subject of recent backlash due to an “interview” it conducted with the Japanese-American actor Mackenyu Maeda, who plays Roronoa Zoro in One Piece on Netflix.

The problem is that it wasn’t an interview at all.

For an important part of this month’s issue, Esquire had already been able to have a photoshoot with the 29-year-old actor. There was also a scheduled sit-down with Mackenyu, who, unfortunately, found he could not make it. The magazine then sent in questions via email. These, however, went unanswered.

What the magazine did then was unprecedented.

“With a driving need for a feature, we had to be inventive. Harnessing our creative license, we pulled his verbatim from previous interviews and fed them through an AI programme to formulate new responses,” the piece by Joy Ling, published on March 6, reads. It adds that the “interview was produced with Claude, Copilot, and edited by humans.”

The backlash has been unmerciful and is still gathering steam, with fans deeming the interview with AI-Mackenyu disrespectful, at the very least, particularly in one generated answer that had the actor talking about the pressures of living up to action star Sonny Chiba and making him proud. Mr Chiba, Mackenyu’s father, died in 2021. 

An AV Club article called out the “interview” on April 3, saying that it “mashes up AI slop and ghoulishness to make ghoulislop.” 

Ouch.

“This is a clean case study of where AI content generation crosses a line. Using AI to summarise research, draft outlines, or assist with copy is one thing. Manufacturing quotes and attributing emotional statements to a real person is fabrication, regardless of the tool used to do it. The ‘we edited the AI output afterward’ defence doesn’t hold up when the core problem is that the subject never said any of it,” reads another.

On social media, the actor’s fans are making their feelings known.

“Wow. Just utterly shameful and disrespectful,” wrote one.

“This is so disrespectful to him,” another added.

On Reddit, a user on the platform wrote, “This breaks so many journalism ethics. They should have just scrapped that story and replaced it with something else.”

“At that point, it’s no longer even journalism. It’s fiction and calls the entire publication into question. Completely braindead decision lol,” chimed in another. 

“How to make sure that Netflix is never gonna send anybody their way ever again,” remarked a third. /TISG

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