Yang Mi (above) and Athena Chu. [Photo/Weibo.com]

The video producer, Xiao, later responded on Bilibili: "These videos are mainly used for technical communication, and there is no consideration of profit."

Xiao also posted on his Weibo account, saying he was a loyal fan of Yang and was sorry to stir up the discussion.

"The intention of the creation is to let more friends know about this technology, and help celebrities avoid suffering losses from fake news."

"At the same time, I hope these videos will let more people understand the secret behind fake videos and improve the public’s ability to recognize a fake when they see it," the producer added.

Images produced with "face-changing" technology re better known as deepfakes, a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake". This is an artificial intelligence-based human image synthesis technique. It takes advantage of a combination of existing and source videos to result in a fake video that shows a person or persons performing an action that never occurred in reality.