--- title: "Chinese Release of “Together” Edited Woman’s Face Onto Gay Man to Censor Same-Sex Couple" description: "Chinese censors digitally altered a gay couple into a heterosexual couple in the Dave Franco movie Together." date: "2025-09-26" modified: "2025-09-26" authors: - name: "Sharon Adarlo" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/sadarlo" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/together-movie-gay-censor-china" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Ethics" - "Future Society" --- # Chinese Release of “Together” Edited Woman’s Face Onto Gay Man to Censor Same-Sex Couple ![Chinese censors digitally altered a gay couple into a heterosexual couple in the Dave Franco movie Together.]() *Photo Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Steve Granitz/FilmMagic via Getty / Getty Images* Something weird is happening with the release of the Australian horror movie "[Together]()," starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie, and it's not the plot in which — *spoilers!* — their bodies start fusing together after a night in the woods. No, it's that the original version featured a gay couple getting married. But in the film's Chinese release, someone digitally altered it — quite possibly using AI — and replaced one of the men with a woman, [*Bloomberg* reports](), and the homophobic and censorious implications are irking audiences across the globe. "What’s happening outside the film is even more terrifying than what’s shown in it," wrote a user on the Chinese social network Weibo, [as spotted by *The Guardian*](). "This is disrespectful to the original work and another challenge to audience’s tolerance," a movie goer wrote on Douban, another Chinese website, as reported by *Bloomberg*. "They want our money but won’t show us the the complete version. It’s also disrespectful to the LGBT community." China's censors have a penchant for removing references to homosexuality in movies like "[Bohemian Rhapsody]()" and the [Harry Potter franchise](), but these previous attempts were clumsy and [created confusing plot holes]() in [movies]() by deleting scenes. Now, the sophisticated and seamless digital edit in "Together" signals what appears to be a new step in content suppression in China. Thankfully, the outcry from the online peanut gallery forced the local distributor to [halt the film's wide release in China](). Again, it hasn't been confirmed whether AI was used, but the mere whiff that a powerful technology like it can easily scrub controversial segments from a movie should send a chill through anybody who's a minority or holds politically charged opinions. Because if censors want to erase a gay couple that appears only one minute in the movie, what lengths will they go to block out anything they don't like in other places? A Chinese gay rights activist, who declined to be identified for safety reasons, told *Bloomberg* that the probable use of AI in erasing a character in a movie shows that censors are eager to use advanced technologies that can erase queer people from everyday life. That prospect is indeed scary — and probably more frightening than any horror movie. **More on censorship:** *[Chinese Police Cracking Down on Naughty Fiction]()*