Lotte Home Shopping paired its virtual host with a film's NFT drop

The persona

Lucy is a computer-generated 'virtual model' that Lotte Home Shopping, the Korean television and live-commerce retailer, presents as its own in-house creation. A report on the retailer's September 2022 technology agreement with the content company 4BY4 identifies Lucy as a model Lotte Home Shopping 'developed in-house,' naming the retailer's marketing head Shin Seong-bin and media-business head Lee Bo-hyun alongside 4BY4's own executives as the officials behind a plan to upgrade her toward live, two-way commerce hosting. By that point Lucy had already fronted a limited digital-collectible sale tied to a film release.

What the documents establish

Two Korean trade-press reports, both dated 25 May 2022, record that Lotte Home Shopping had opened what it called the retail industry's first NFT marketplace, its 'NFT Shop' app, the previous month. ZDNet Korea's report quotes the retailer's digital-business head, identified as Jinho, describing plans to keep offering customers 'scarce value ownership' through new digital art tied to Lucy and to the film 'The Witch: Part 2.' A wire report carried by Financial News adds that the Lucy-branded item, titled 'Lucy Meets the World,' packaged 140 photographs from her activity since February 2021 into a 50-piece digital-art edition sold from 30 May 2022, with a prize drawing for a photo session with the character.

Character versus company

Lucy's NFT and her later hosting debut read like a young presenter's personal milestones, a photo history, a solo broadcast, but the documents credit every one of those choices to Lotte Home Shopping's own staff. The September 2022 agreement describes upgrading Lucy to a level 'capable of two-way communication with customers' as a company decision, not a change Lucy's own account announced on its own terms. A February 2024 report shows that plan reaching air as 'Lucy Talk Live,' a weekly fashion segment where Lucy appears without a human co-host, using a text-to-speech voice; the same report cites Lotte Home Shopping's own, self-reported figure that live chat volume rose more than fivefold against the prior week's slot.

What to watch

Whether Lucy ever reached the real-time, two-way interaction the retailer's 2022 agreement described, or whether 'Lucy Talk Live' still runs on pre-produced segments over a live chat window, is not settled by the sources reviewed here; this is an editorial gap, not a documented fact. Also worth watching: how far Lotte Home Shopping extends Lucy-branded collectibles beyond the 2022 film tie-in, and whether any figure beyond the retailer's own chat-volume claim ever measures her programming's reach.

• Has Lotte Home Shopping documented, anywhere beyond its own reporting, that Lucy's broadcasts involve real-time two-way exchanges rather than pre-recorded segments?
• What became of the 50-piece 'Lucy Meets the World' collectible after its May 2022 sale, and did resale activity ever surface on a secondary marketplace?
• Did Lotte Home Shopping pair Lucy with another film or brand tie-in after 'The Witch: Part 2,' and on what terms?

The clearest record of Lucy is Lotte Home Shopping's own trade-press disclosures about a marketplace, a film tie-in, and a staffing decision, not any claim made in Lucy's voice; where the retailer's account stops, so does what can be verified here.