New Japanese Pop Idol Shocks Fans With News–She’s Not Real

 Only 15 seconds in the limelight and she'd already created an overnight buzz. She was the newest member of the very popular all-girl Japanese idol group AKB 48. Upon seeing the new face appear on a candy commercial, the band's faithful took to the message boards: Who is Aimi Eguchi?

 

This past Sunday, Ezaki Glico, the candy company which aired the commercial, confirmed what many of AKB 48's fans had come to suspect: Aimi Eguchi wasn't real.

 
The new group member, it turns out, was a computer-generated composite of the real band members. Her pretty face was actually made up of the "best features" of six other members: her eyes, nose, mouth, hair/body, face outline and eyebrows were not flesh-and-blood, but cut-and-paste.
 
Not everyone was so quick to catch on, however, and Aimi had already formed a fan base of her own. "The video shocked fans of Eguchi," reports ChannelNews Asia, "who were convinced that her features were more the result of good genes than the skillful use of computer graphics." 

http://singularityhub.com/2011/06/22/new-japanese-pop-idol-shocks-fans-with-news%e2%80%93shes-not-real-video/
 
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In 1996, William Gibson wrote "Idoru" which featured a wildly popular Japanese idol who was an AI construct.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru