If you’re a law enforcement agency trying to warn the public about the harms of recreational drug use, the last thing you should do is make a music video glamorizing drug use.
On Friday—the International Day Against Drug Abuse and International Trafficking—the Hong Kong Correctional Services Department (CSD) released an AI-generated anti-drug PSA. The only problem was that by giving the ad the same sparkly vibe as a Coca-Cola commercial, the agency unintentionally made illicit drug use seem pretty damn fun.
We all remember those ads from the early 2000s, which told you if you smoked weed, you’d flatten like a pancake onto your couch and be able to speak with your dog. Those commercials may have accidentally sparked more curiosity than fear, but they didn’t come right out and give you a list of the various pleasures you might enjoy by getting high. The Hong Kong CSD ad, in contrast, opened with a surreal segment in which an AI-generated pop group called “Obsession” literally sang the praises of various illegal drugs.
Each of the group’s four female members was meant to represent a different substance. “I’m Icy! Take a snort from me,” the one representing crystal meth said during the video. Another called Coke made that drug sound like some enhanced version of Gatorade: “Cocaine goes down easily and beats the heat,” she said. “It energizes and keeps you clear-headed. Super dope!” The other two members, Weedy and Little E, represented cannabis and etomidate, respectively—the latter being a clinical anesthetic found in some illicit vape pods and known colloquially as “space oil.”
The ad eventually gets to the actual “drugs are bad, m’kay,” part. Icy, Coke, Weedy, and Little E transform into four grizzled elderly men, who are supposed to represent the true, frightening face of drug abuse. For a few terrible moments, they continue dancing onstage wearing their little skirts, before the sequence cuts to another AI-generated video of drug paraphernalia crawling with what appear to be cockroach-scorpion hybrids, followed by a black-and-white shot of the four men together in a jail cell, smiling psychotically. The words “Drugs are extremely harmful and can ruin a life” appear below, and the previously sugary pop music is twisted into the discordant tones of a horror film score.
Perplexingly, the K-pop band gets much more screentime in the ad than the actual anti-drug message. The whole thing looks a bit like your typical prescription antidepressant commercial: lots of very bright colors, happy-looking people, and promises of a chemical fix to all your suffering, followed by a brief and disorienting clip outlining some of the horrors that might ensue if you actually partake in the drug being advertised. (Side effects may include…)
The Hong Kong CSD removed the video in response to online complaints saying it made drugs look alluring rather than harmful. So the agency tried again with another AI-generated anti-drug PSA. This new one, however, included an imposing voice confidently declaring something that is definitely not the case in Hong Kong: “Whether you take or sell drugs, you won’t go to jail,” it reportedly said. For the second time, on June 27, the Hong Kong CSD removed the video. It issued a public apology that same day.
But the damage already seems to have been done. “It was very successful,” one person commented under the “Obsession” video after it had been reposted to YouTube. “After watching it, I want to try a few bites of each.”
