MAVE : AI GIRL GROUP
The music industry constantly evolves with each new generation, embracing reinvention and adding perspectives. AI’s crossover with the industry was inevitable, leading to the emergence of projects like MAVE: – an AI girl group. Debuting on January 25th, 2023, under Metaverse Entertainment, is a quartet consisting of MARTY:, TYRA:, ZENA:, and SIU:. Their debut single “Pandora” combines synthpop and trap, accompanied by a cyberpunk-influenced music video. Metaverse Entertainment, a subsidiary of Netmarble, collaborates with Kakao Entertainment to create and manage virtual artists.It: is the agency’s first group, and rumours about their debut circulated in 2021. Since their debut, they has gained significant attention worldwide, accumulating millions of views on YouTube.
Olivia Oh, the Strategic IP Team Leader and MAVE: Task Force (TF) Leader at Kakao Entertainment Corp., is a key figure in the MAVE: project. Although she initially had a curiosity about AI idols, she never expected the opportunity to work on such a project due to her limited knowledge of digital humans and AI technologies.
With her expertise in marketing and conceptualizing from her experience with K-pop, particularly working with IU, she brought valuable skills to the project. Oh oversees planning and marketing for MAVE: from Kakao Entertainment’s side. Her interest in digital girl groups sparked in 2018 with the debut of K/DA, a pop quartet from the game League of Legends. K/DA’s success demonstrated the global audience’s interest in digitized formulas, incorporating elements of K-pop in their music, choreography, styling, and artist dynamics. Oh has since followed the development of virtual influencers, musicians, models, and YouTubers, constantly exploring the possibilities of evolution in the digital sphere.
One of the distinguishing features of K-pop is its stellar concepts, and Olivia Oh wanted to ensure that MAVE: accurately represented this aspect of the industry. The development of MAVE: began with ideating and creating character proposals for each member. The visual production experts from Kakao Entertainment and the art director at Metaverse Entertainment collaborated closely to design the attractive visuals for MAVE: based on the character planning.
MAVE: has an intricate storyline that unfolds across their music videos, social media presence, and webtoon series called Mave: Another World. In their universe, the members originate from the future and have landed in our world in search of emotional freedom. The concept aims to convey their reason for existence, allowing their music and music videos to flow naturally.
The worldview of MAVE: revolves around four girls from a place called IDYPIA, who serve as the sole retainers of human emotions. While IDYPIA may appear to be a utopia on the surface, it has actually lost its sense of humanity and become more like a dystopia. Upon discovering this, the girls embark on an adventure to restore the world of emotions, akin to opening Pandora’s box in IDYPIA. The “Pandora” music video showcases futuristic backdrops such as an airborne city, flying cars, robots, expressionless individuals, and surveillance towers. This immersive experience contributes to materializing MAVE:’s identity and universe, representing only a portion of the efforts put into the project.
