In the last few months, pictures of a young, smiling woman with her motorcycle have been very popular on social media in Japan. There were hundreds of appearances in a few days. But not everything is as it seems. Fans noticed that the woman’s arm was too hairy and a shadow in the picture showed a different face. It was then that the Japanese TV show Monday Late Show revealed that the woman, in fact, Zonggu, was a 50-year-old man.
The creator behind the @azusagakuyuki profile admitted that he used deepfake apps to create the “character”. The goal was to be more present on social networks and, according to him, people prefer to follow posts from “younger and more beautiful woman”. “No one is going to read what a typical middle-aged man did, take care of and take pictures of his motorcycle,” he said.
The results of the montages made by FaceApp – an application that allows users to change the look of the face in the pictures – were impressive. He says before he got less than 10 appearances, now, with the “new look”, he can easily get over 1,000 appearances. Zonggu’s Twitter profile currently has 19,000 followers.
The release of the program was a success, of course, among fans and viewers. “You have excellent magic skills,” said a user on Twitter. After the program went ahead, Zonggu reached 25,000 followers on the network.