SM Founder Lee Soo-man Unveils 4DGS Tech for New A2O Groups

Lee Soo-man, the producer who helped define K-POP as a genre, is betting on a new piece of technology to shape what comes next. At 74, the A2O Entertainment key producer and visionary leader returned to the Korean entertainment scene for the first time in two years and five months with a clear message: the future of K-POP will be built on how wisely the industry uses artificial intelligence and new recording tools.

Lee held a debut showcase for A2O's new boy group A2O SOUL and girl group A2O LITE at Kintex Hall 2 in Ilsan on Monday at 4 p.m. Before the groups took the stage, he stepped out to explain the technology he and A2O have been developing together.

"As we move into a future shared with AI, what matters is thinking carefully about how to use this technology wisely," Lee said.

He opened by returning to a term he has pushed for years: Culture Technology, or CT. "I've talked about Culture Technology for a long time," he said. "It isn't just about adding technology to culture. When a new technology appears, how do you connect it to culture? How do you create content and experiences that couldn't exist before? What new technology does that content need, and can it actually be built? Those questions are also part of Culture Technology."

He said the search itself is part of the work. "Even if it takes a long time, there are technologies you need. If you feel a certain technology is needed now, you look for it. If it doesn't exist, you ask whether you can build it yourself. Searching, experimenting and actually making it happen are all part of what CT is to me. I want to call that steady effort CT, too."

The core technology Lee introduced at the showcase is called 4D Gaussian Splatting, or 4DGS, which A2O has invested in and developed. "Until now, when we shot video, the camera only recorded what it was pointed at," he said. "Position, angle and movement were almost always decided at the moment of filming. Any viewpoint you didn't shoot simply didn't exist. This technology is different. It moves from a camera that films to a camera that creates. 4DGS doesn't record one scene. It records the time and space the artist exists in."

Lee traced the idea back to his years as chief producer at SM Entertainment. "In the past, I built a matrix camera system myself and made videos where the camera appeared to circle around artists like Girls' Generation, SHINee, TVXQ and BoA, who were suspended in the air and frozen in place," he said.

"We set up more than 100 still cameras and shot at the same instant, so we could capture a space where the subject was paused for one moment," he said. "Back then, I started thinking about what it would look like if we could do the same thing with video cameras. Sixteen years later, we're starting to turn that idea into reality with a new system. Now you can look at the artist you love from the viewpoint you choose."

Lee also pointed to A2O's partnership with Samsung Electronics. "I'm grateful we can walk this path together with Samsung Electronics," he said. "I think 4DGS can become the best recording device among all the ways we've captured things so far. This might be the final form of the camera."

He said the shift raises a bigger question for the industry. "Now we can leave this very moment behind as data in full. We have to think about what we want to leave for the future," he said. He added that A2O wants to build a system that lets artists and fans video-call each other easily, and to create an interactive live talk show in which fans and artists can talk to one another, rather than having fans simply watch a one-way broadcast.

Lee argued that this technology could set A2O's artists apart from the rest of K-POP. With 4DGS, fans can feels as if they are standing on stage alongside an artist, watching the performance up close from the angle of their choice.

Even so, he said, the music has to lead. "As long as K-POP groups are classified as singers, I think the most important thing is music. The feeling that something is different from existing K-POP has to start from the music. I hope the song, the choreography, the music video and the concert performance all feel different. Even that isn't enough. It has to be content that can win mainstream love, too."

The showcase offered a glimpse to where Lee believes the industry needs to go next, through artists built around new recording and distribution tools rather than through promotion alone. His track record of pushing K-POP into new formats is not finished. It is still being written.