Netflix’s The Scandal is supposed to look beautiful.
And in many scenes, it does.
The hanbok is elaborate. The colors are carefully controlled. The sets are polished, and the Joseon-era world often looks more like a painting than an ordinary television drama.
But some viewers are having a very different reaction.
Instead of asking:
“Why does this drama look so beautiful?”
they are asking:
“Why does some of it look so artificial?”
That question has appeared in online discussions about the drama, with viewers pointing to backgrounds, soft-looking faces, unusual focus and heavily stylized images.
Some have even wondered whether AI-generated backgrounds were used.
So what’s actually happening?
First: There Is No Confirmed Evidence That the Backgrounds Are AI-Generated
This distinction is important.
A viewer saying that a background looks like AI is not the same as evidence that generative AI was actually used to create it.
As of this writing, I could not find an official statement from Netflix, director Jung Ji-woo or the production team confirming that The Scandal used generative AI to create its backgrounds.
Netflix’s own promotional material instead describes the series as a visually ambitious Joseon-period production and specifically highlights its setting in Bukchon.
Director Jung has also publicly discussed some of the drama’s deliberate artistic choices, including its use of pansori structure and the importance of hanbok in expressing the characters’ emotions.
So the safest answer is:
We don’t currently know of confirmed AI-generated backgrounds.
But that doesn’t mean viewers are imagining the artificial feeling.
The Scandal Is Extremely Stylized
One possible explanation is simply that The Scandal doesn’t seem particularly interested in looking natural.
Look at the way the series presents its world.
Faces can appear unusually soft.
Backgrounds sometimes feel separated from the actors.
Colors are carefully manipulated.
Lighting can look almost too perfect.
And some exterior scenes have the polished quality of an illustration rather than the messiness of a real location.
That’s not automatically bad cinematography.
It can be an aesthetic choice.
In fact, even reviews that criticize the drama’s storytelling have noted its elaborate sets, color grading, costumes and polished Joseon-era visual presentation.
The problem is that heavy stylization can eventually cross a line for some viewers.
Instead of thinking:
“This looks cinematic.”
they begin thinking:
“This doesn’t look real.”
Modern Cameras Can Look Too Clean
There is also a broader issue with modern streaming productions.
Digital cameras can capture extremely clean images.
Filmmakers then often use shallow depth of field, lens characteristics, diffusion, color grading and other techniques to make that clean digital image feel more cinematic.
Viewers have complained about similar visual trends across other Netflix productions — particularly images where the center remains sharp while the edges or background appear heavily blurred or smeared.
Again, that doesn’t prove The Scandal uses exactly the same techniques.
But it helps explain why audiences increasingly describe certain modern images as looking “fake” or even “AI-generated” when what they may actually be reacting to is aggressive digital stylization.
And Then There Is the Strange Flashback Problem
The Scandal already has one confirmed visual oddity.
The flashbacks.
Viewers noticed almost immediately that people looked strangely stretched during some scenes set in the past.
One published technical review identified a change from the main 2.39:1 presentation to an approximately 2.00:1 anamorphically squeezed presentation in the flashbacks.
And it wasn’t only international viewers who noticed.
A Korean Cineplay review published after watching the complete series specifically said the reviewer still couldn’t understand what the distorted flashback aspect ratio was supposed to accomplish.
So The Scandal is clearly willing to manipulate the image aggressively for stylistic reasons.
That makes the debate over its other unusual visuals more interesting.
Maybe the Problem Isn’t That It Looks Cheap
This is where I think the criticism can be misunderstood.
The Scandal doesn’t necessarily look artificial because it looks cheap.
In many scenes, it looks expensive.
That’s almost the point.
Everything can appear so carefully arranged — costume, skin, lighting, background, color — that the image sometimes loses the imperfections our eyes associate with reality.
Imagine a portrait that has been retouched just slightly too much.
The person may still look beautiful.
But suddenly you become aware of the retouching.
Something similar can happen with cinematography.
The more filmmakers manipulate an image to make it beautiful, the greater the risk that viewers begin noticing the manipulation instead of the beauty.
The Hanbok Shows That Much of This Styling Is Deliberate
We also know that at least some of the visual design carries narrative meaning.
Son Ye-jin explained that Lady Cho’s clothing becomes darker as her desire grows, while Hui-yeon’s white clothing was chosen to suit her character.
Director Jung Ji-woo also emphasized the importance of traditional Korean aesthetics in the production.
So it would be unfair to dismiss the entire visual style as bad post-production.
There is clearly intentional design behind it.
The more interesting question is whether that design always works for the viewer.
Why Are People Calling It “AI-Looking”?
Probably because “AI-looking” has become a new visual shorthand.
People increasingly use the phrase for images that feel:
too smooth,
too perfect,
strangely lit,
overly separated from their backgrounds,
or somehow realistic and unrealistic at the same time.
That doesn’t tell us how the image was actually created.
It tells us how the image feels to the viewer.
And that’s an important distinction.
So, Did The Scandal Use AI Backgrounds?
For now, there is no reliable public evidence I found that allows us to say yes.
So I wouldn’t.
What we can say is that some viewers find the show’s visual treatment unusually artificial, and The Scandal undeniably uses strong stylistic manipulation elsewhere — most obviously in its controversial flashback presentation.
Maybe that’s why the series is producing such contradictory reactions.
One viewer sees:
beautiful cinematography.
Another sees:
overprocessed images.
And another asks:
“Was this made with AI?”
They may all be looking at exactly the same scene.
The real debate, then, isn’t necessarily whether The Scandal looks expensive.
It clearly does.
The more interesting question is:
Can an image become so polished that it stops feeling real?
For some Scandal viewers, apparently, the answer is yes.