In early 2021, the writer Lucy Sante sent an e-mail to her closest friends. Its subject was "A Bombshell," which Sante later joked was an unintentional pun. In the text she attached, she explained that at the age of sixty-six she was accepting her long-suppressed identity as a transgender woman. Her transition had been catalyzed by an interaction with artificial intelligence. That February, Sante had downloaded FaceApp, a photo-editing application that uses neural networks to generate realistic transformations of people's faces.

K'Sante's launch was complicated by some of Riot's marketing efforts. Lil Nas X is this year's "League of Legends" World Championship performer, after the annual esports event "hosted" a group of virtual Korean pop stars called K/DA (a group invented by Riot) in years prior. Lil Nas X's collaboration came with a big marketing rollout: The singer debuted a new theme song, and starred in several advertisements where he pretended to be the so-called president of Riot Games. The collaboration will also help Riot sell in-game merchandise: Lil Nas X designed a cosmetic skin for K'Sante that will be sold for real money via in-game currency.