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Ridiculous Chinese censorship used AI to change the gay couple in Together (2025) to a heterosexual couple
(hexbear.net)
Usually, they only censor the explicit content. But this is the first time that AI tools were used to directly alter the content of the original film.
By the way, the film has been withdrawn from a wide release in China after receiving too many complaints.
I know from previous discussions about this that the LGBTQ media censorship in China is sadly a real thing. Here’s the 2017 guidelines I looked at before: https://web.archive.org/web/20170630135640/http://www.cnsa.cn/2017/06/30/ARTI0Qg4cp7jtd1Z5o0RnfzM170630.shtml
Auto-translated portion in question:
On this topic it’s often very difficult to determine what’s real and what isn’t, given that you have western media or CIA cutouts distorting the narrative for their own purposes. I try to look into the published regulations directly, but for these 2017 guidelines it doesn’t seem to explicitly discuss gay marriage. Were there new guidelines published, or is this some kind of a new push? Or is this just a company that misinterpreted the guidelines and did the AI stuff out of misinformation or paranoia?
This Zhihu thread has the top comment listing out selected examples of what’s being censored in recent times to get a good idea of what kind of contents are being censored.
People didn’t even think the film would have a cinema release in China because of what you said, gay couple and body horror content. So when it was approved for a wide release, people were in fact quite surprised.
As I have explained to other users here, there are literally only two companies that deal with imported films in China, and the same two groups of people who have had to deal with the censorship bureau over the years for hundreds of foreign films. The idea that these companies don’t know exactly what has to be removed in order to pass the censorship just doesn’t pass the smell test.
The ridiculous part is that they thought it would be a good idea to use AI tool to alter the original content on screen to get around this issue and then show it on cinema. Read the Zhihu thread, usually it’s just cutting a few scenes here and there. This is something new, and ridiculous lol.
Apologies, because I can’t translate the page right now, but does that thread have any links to actual sources? As in, I’m curious to see the actual regulations that apply to this film. No offense, but it’s a little difficult to tell what’s real and what’s rumor from forum posts alone.
The post right above the one replied to has a link to the minutes of a meeting on the regulations.
You mean what I posted?
Yeah! Wait, what?