Hundreds of thousands of people follow them on social media, celebrities want to date them, and traditional media recognize them as the most influential people on the internet. The problem is that in reality they are just - or maybe just? - AI creations. What does the future hold for virtual influencers?
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An influencer is a person who, through their reach on social media, can reach many people and consequently influence them. Especially their consumer decisions. Science has not yet been able to fully explain the phenomenon of this profession, but over the past fifteen years it has become one of the most desired on the network - and certainly one of the more profitable. So profitable that today we can talk about the existence of a high-speed influencer industry, which is primarily harnessed by marketing agencies to promote specific products.
However, this industry is not free from problems. Successive scandals (e.g. Pandora Gate), increasingly exorbitant rates for cooperation and rising costs of promotional campaigns in social media itself have made the advertising industry start looking at influencers with a less favorable eye. And look for new alternatives.
Karina Orzechowska
One of the most talked-about examples of such an alternative is provided by the Barcelona marketing agency The Clueless. Its representatives, surprised by the amount of rates for promotional cooperation with top Instagram stars, decided to create their own influencer. That's how Aitana López was born - a pink-haired personal trainer and virtual celebrity developed entirely with the help of generative artificial intelligence.
In a short time, Aitana became a hit on the internet and managed to gather over a quarter of a million fans on Instagram. Her popularity became so great that supposedly a certain actor - unaware of her origin - managed to make her a social proposal in a private message. The employees of The Clueless themselves admit that they accidentally created a monster, although, in their opinion, at least a beautiful monster.
Shakespeare is credited with the quote saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is undoubtedly some psychological truth in this, although from a sociological or cultural perspective one could say that what we call standards of beauty or attractiveness are only socially created constructs. They particularly apply to the image of virtual influencers - basically influencers, as it is young women with flirtatious looks posing in daring styles who are most often created with the help of AI. Exactly like Aitana López.
In the marketing industry, there was once a slogan "sex sells", but empirical research does not seem to confirm this alleged effect. However, the sexualization of the female image by artificial intelligence algorithms remains a disturbing fact. The causes of this phenomenon are primarily seen in algorithms trained on hundreds of thousands of eroticized representations of women that flood social media. However, the question remains open as to why marketing agencies consciously reproduce this stereotype.
After all, besides the aforementioned Aitana, another virtual influencer currently attracting the most attention is Lil Miquela. This Los Angeles-based "celebrity", who "identifies herself" as half-Brazilian, half-Spanish, currently boasts a fan base on Instagram of 2.6 million people. Her popularity is currently so great that Miquela has been recognized by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential people on the internet. But also in this case we are dealing with a young, slim and stereotypically physically attractive person posing in various "Instagram" locations, created based on AI.
Numerous forecasts suggest that the year 2024 will not so much be a year of widespread use of all kinds of AI-based assistants, but rather a calculation of how profitable it is to implement such solutions. And in this context, the popularity of virtual influencers should be considered primarily. Because although they themselves do not demand remuneration, it should be remembered that behind each such person - whether real or artificial - there is a whole team of people managing her image and expecting profits. And in this industry, only the latter must be real, the rest not necessarily.
There are also several other factors in favor of virtual influencers. Unlike real stars, those generated by AI will never age and will not engage in reputation-ruining scandals. Due to their programming nature, virtual influencers can also be polyglots and have extensive knowledge on many topics. They also do not know borders, time zones, or human fatigue. So it's no wonder that marketing agencies are increasingly reaching for their images and services. It turns out that real faces are not needed to advertise certain products - virtual ones, which are slowly becoming indistinguishable from real ones, are perfectly sufficient.
Other forecasts suggest that in 2024 there will be a gradual spread of all kinds of synthetic content, i.e. produced by generative AI algorithms. Paradoxically, however, it is they that can give a virtual character originality and make it stand out against human influencers, who are becoming more and more generic and similar to each other in terms of appearance, clothing, facial expressions or even language.
So where is the place for non-virtual influencers in all this? Two scenarios are possible. First, studies suggest that people still prefer to watch other people, even if they are not perfect, at least possibly authentic. They can also more easily establish a bond with them, even if it is parasocial, but irreplaceable, even for AI.
The second scenario says that the time of free internet and free social media is coming to an end. In their assumptions, their paid version would be a source of valuable content prepared by people for people, while the free one would be dominated by synthetic content, ubiquitous data extracting algorithms and bots driving artificial traffic. Virtual influencers could fit perfectly into this vision of free internet, offering literally an illusion of reality.
And since the paid internet would focus on authenticity and high quality generated by people, it would become an ideal place for live influencers. However, they would probably have to start doing something other than just being - literally and figuratively - advertising faces, because as you can see, both the face and the whole body are increasingly easy to generate by AI.
Justyna Bakalarska-Stankiewicz
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