Xiaomi has issued a public apology for its Japanese users following the huge uproar over its offensive Redmi Note 9 Pro promotion video.
With deep self-reflection and thorough internal investigation, we’d like to sincerely apologize to those offended in Japan and elsewhere by a recent insensitive video from us. pic.twitter.com/dvcDj6XjHO
— Xiaomi (@Xiaomi) May 7, 2020
Recently, Xiaomi posted a new advertisement to show the performance of Redmi Note 9 Pro. The ad, which has now been redacted, shows a fat man turning into a white balloon after eating a piece of sushi.
Later in the video, the man looks down on the entire city from the sky and explodes, creating a gigantic mushroom cloud.
The video looks like a parody of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of 1945, which led to the loss of countless lives.
Interestingly, “Fat Man” was the code name given to the nuclear bomb that dropped on Nagasaki. In addition, the explosion in the video resembles the nuclear bomb imagery popular in media.
In the apology letter, Xiaomi says it has established a team to screen all the materials to avoid any similar incident in the future.
This is not the first time Xiaomi has come under the radar of criticism. The company’s VP recently made inappropriate comments under the guise of promoting Mi 10 camera capabilities.
He suggested the phone’s camera could be zoomed onto a basketball player’s crotch or it could be used to spy on women’s bedrooms. He later apologized for the comment.
Besides this, Xiaomi was recently accused of harvesting web data of users without their consent. In response, the company added options to switch off data collection.
