AI cannot get pregnant, but AI female idols can

The whole situation is absurdly surreal, how could staying composed ever be a punishment.

Not long ago, BABYQUEEN, a domestically developed non-governmental AI K-pop girl group, released an official announcement, stating in the persona of member Mity that she was confirmed to be pregnant. After internal discussion, she decided to temporarily leave the group to rest fully, and this announcement quickly went viral across social media.

Xiaoxia by Daming Lake on Xiaohongshu

We originally expected AI idols could free people from the constraints of age, physical conditions, romantic relationships and childbirth.

Yet when humans start to write life stories for AI avatars, they end up moving all the pressures, prejudices and conflicts that belong to the real world intact into the virtual space.

Why is pregnancy the very reason chosen for a member to leave the group

The virtual girl group BABYQUEEN started as a pretty ordinary hobby project. According to reports, several K-pop fans who had no access to real-life performance resources designed five members with AI tools, gave them names, and arranged their works and activities.

The five members of BABYQUEEN are Hyeina, Kim Nawon, Youngxi, Jocee and Mity, and their debut track *BangBang* shares the same title as the song by IVE.

Later, as operating multiple AI characters at the same time brought huge pressure, the team wanted to reduce their workload. To write the character Mity out of the group, the team published a letter written in her persona, saying she was confirmed to be pregnant and had decided to temporarily leave the group to rest after discussion.

They admitted the reason they picked was inappropriate, emphasizing that the whole story was fictional and they did not profit from it. They also issued an apology in Mity's persona, but still failed to calm down the controversy. As the discussion expanded, the creators said they had faced body shaming and malicious attacks, and even their family members were harassed.

On October 14, after Mity left the group, BABYQUEEN returned as a four-member group, announcing that their first official comeback single would be *Next Level*, which shares the same title as the track by aespa.

Why did the creators subconsciously pick pregnancy as the reason to write a character off the show?

In real life, the core of K-pop idols' business model is "selling fantasies" and "delivering emotional value". By staying single and keeping a proper distance from the public, idols provide a sense of exclusivity and companionship for their fans, especially "girlfriend fans" and "boyfriend fans", who pay real money to support these fantasies by buying albums, voting for their idols, and joining fan support activities.

South Korean media, especially paparazzi, keep extremely close eyes on idols' private lives. Once a romantic relationship is exposed, it will not only trigger fierce backlash from fans, but also spark public opinion crises, leading to idols "collapsing their public image" and a sharp nosedive in their career.

Take the "April 13 Airport Pig Hunting" operation as an example. Lee Haechan, a member of South Korean boy group NCT, was surrounded by a large crowd of fans at Incheon Airport after rumors spread that he was dating a woman in secret. Some netizens even tried to track his private travel schedule through clues such as flight numbers and hotel bookings.

It was later revealed that his team spent about 300,000 RMB booking and cancelling multiple flights to create chaotic travel arrangements, in an attempt to avoid being followed.

Some fans then organized "pig hunting groups", staking out at the airport all night, and even mistook other artists for their target at one point. After Lee Haechan showed up at Incheon Airport, he was verbally abused and interrogated by some fans at close range.

Therefore, while a member leaving the group may seem abrupt, a private life crisis gives the story plenty of room for public discussion.

However, for real women in the real world, pregnancy means real physical risks, long-term physiological changes, and may also be accompanied by career interruptions, shifts in life priorities, and decades of child-rearing responsibilities afterwards.

A virtual character that has no real body and does not need to bear any cost of childbirth is rashly given the experience of pregnancy, and even uses it as a dramatic setting to create topics and attract public attention. All the real difficulties and struggles that women face in real life seem to be simplified into a trivial plot point.

Virtual character creation can have fictional stories, but it should never use childbirth as a plot device, turn women's pregnancy experiences into a traffic-drawing tool, and stir up public emotions to create hot topics.

Even if it was just a self-entertaining concept from the team, releasing the announcement to the public counts as improper exploitation of the topic of childbirth.

The internet celebrity that cannot get sick borrowed a medical history

Mity's pregnancy plot looks more like a hastily designed storyline, while the leukemia story of American virtual internet celebrity Lil Miquela has a clear purpose of spreading influence.

On May 6, 2025, Lil Miquela, a virtual internet celebrity with around 5 million followers on social platforms, posted a video on TikTok. In the video, she said she had a nosebleed again on the filming set, and she did not know if she should worry about it.

23 days later, she updated her post again. Sitting on a chair in the hospital, she told her fans that she went for a medical checkup due to recurring nosebleeds and physical fatigue, and was finally diagnosed with leukemia.

The news soon sparked huge controversy. Because Lil Miquela is not a real human at all: she is a virtual internet celebrity created by computer technology, has no real physical body, and it is naturally impossible for her to get leukemia.

Virtual internet celebrity Lil Miquela

In fact, this was a public welfare campaign in cooperation with NMDP, a non-profit bone marrow donation organization in the United States. The video marked the commercial partnership, and explained that her illness symptoms had been dramatized to reflect the experiences of real patients.

But many netizens still felt uncomfortable, arguing that letting a virtual character that will never get sick in real life tell the story of cancer, treatment and asking for help in the first person is a sign of disrespect for real cancer patients.

Facing criticism, NMDP explained that the campaign was designed to attract young people's attention to hematopoietic stem cell donation. The production team also referred to the experiences of real patients, donors and medical professionals, hoping to spread disease knowledge through the virtual character while avoiding imposing additional physical and emotional burdens on real patients.

After that, Lil Miquela continued to update her "anti-cancer experience", including conversations with medical professionals and sharing updates on her condition. She also collaborated with artist JoJo Siwa, who said she was influenced by these videos and joined NMDP's donor registration list.

It was not until June 27 that Lil Miquela posted what seemed to be the last video in this narrative series, turning the camera to people who are actually suffering from leukemia, and calling on her fans to sign up as donors.

Some netizens pointed out at the time that Lil Miquela could have used her influence to raise public awareness of leukemia, and there was no need to pretend that she was a patient herself.

Lil Miquela was criticized for a similar narrative approach back in 2019.

At that time, she recounted a ride on the Lyft ride-hailing service in the first person. She said that a strange man in the same car suddenly put his hand on her leg, stroked it repeatedly, then pinched her and made sexually suggestive remarks. She felt threatened and finally chose to get off the car halfway on the 101 Freeway.

How should fictional freedom face the real world

From 2025 to 2026, AI virtual characters are penetrating into the field of mass cultural consumption at an unprecedented speed: AI trainees, AI short drama leads, AI singers and others have their own independent personas, fan bases and business models.

Bilibili launched the "AI Idol Debut Season" earlier this year, receiving nearly ten thousand submitted works; Douyin's AI idol talent show *12 Star Trainee Competition* has accumulated over 100 million views across the platform.

Traditional virtual idols (such as Hatsune Miku) are positioned as utility IPs, with emotional projection completed independently by fans; while some current AI idols have their operators directly design detailed life trajectories for them, including falling in love, having conflicts, and even getting pregnant, to strengthen emotional bonding through simulated life narratives.

BABYQUEEN pushed its AI characters to the extreme of "real-person narrative" this time, trying to create cognitive conflicts in exchange for traffic.

The reason why virtual humans are given such detailed life stories is also related to their increasingly mature operation methods.

Spanish virtual model Aitana López was created by The Clueless, and the team plans her schedule, social interactions and daily life content every week. The creators once introduced that she can earn up to 10,000 euros per month, with an average of around 3,000 euros, and some people even asked her out for a date without knowing she was a virtual character.

Virtual model Aitana López

Travers pointed out on VirtualHumans.org: "Virtual influencers will not make social media more fake — social media platforms that are built on promoting fictional lifestyles have actually created an environment where fictional characters can step onto the stage and succeed. One trend has given birth to another."

But interestingly, Generation Z tends to accept this status quo while rejecting it at the same time.