Based on reporting by Daily Maverick

Wire reporting: (Reuters, via Daily Maverick)

Samsung Securities has begun using a four-member, fully AI-generated K-pop group named LUMINA as brand presenters on its social channels, according to a Reuters report from Seoul carried by Daily Maverick¹.

Reuters said the group's debut video, titled Override, passed 3 million YouTube views about five weeks after release¹. Uhm Sewon, who heads the brokerage's media strategy team, told the news agency that staff were inexperienced on camera and that celebrities were expensive and might not fit the brand, and that the firm produces about 1,500 pieces of content a year¹.

The same report said the song, characters and video were made with AI after human planning, that the brokerage has not registered copyright in the song and is not set up to collect music revenue, and that South Korean government guidelines bar copyright registration for music generated entirely by AI with no human creative input¹. It said the firm labels the characters as fictional in large type and runs finance content through about three in-house expert checks¹.

Uhm said measurable returns for the securities business were still hard to quantify after a first music video, and outlined plans for a performance clip, another song, member interviews, short-form challenges, investor-education videos and daily-life clips¹. Park Sang-cheol, chairman of the Korea Singers Association, told Reuters that AI could cut production costs for artists but also threaten session musicians, songwriters and corporate modeling work, and that live performance still offers interaction AI cannot replace¹. Reuters contrasted LUMINA with earlier virtual acts such as MAVE: and PLAVE, which used human voices or motion-capture performers, and noted a human-written, Suno-voiced track that topped South Korean charts in September and October¹.