AI-Created 'Virtual Influencers' Are Stealing Business From Humans (ft.com) 122
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as haircare line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria's Secret. Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media -- despite the fact that she is entirely fictional. Aitana is a "virtual influencer" created using artificial intelligence tools, one of the hundreds of digital avatars that have broken into the growing $21 billion content creator economy. Their emergence has led to worry from human influencers their income is being cannibalized and under threat from digital rivals. That concern is shared by people in more established professions that their livelihoods are under threat from generative AI -- technology that can spew out humanlike text, images and code in seconds. But those behind the hyper-realistic AI creations argue they are merely disrupting an overinflated market.
"We were taken aback by the skyrocketing rates influencers charge nowadays. That got us thinking, 'What if we just create our own influencer?'" said Diana Nunez, co-founder of the Barcelona-based agency The Clueless, which created Aitana. "The rest is history. We unintentionally created a monster. A beautiful one, though." Over the past few years, there have been high-profile partnerships between luxury brands and virtual influencers, including Kim Kardashian's make-up line KKW Beauty with Noonoouri, and Louis Vuitton with Ayayi. Instagram analysis of an H&M advert featuring virtual influencer Kuki found that it reached 11 times more people and resulted in a 91 per cent decrease in cost per person remembering the advert, compared with a traditional ad. "It is not influencing purchase like a human influencer would, but it is driving awareness, favorability and recall for the brand," said Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy, and former head of Meta's creator innovations team. "Influencers themselves have a lot of negative associations related to being fake or superficial, which makes people feel less concerned about the concept of that being replaced with AI or virtual influencers," said Rebecca McGrath, associate director for media and technology at Mintel.
"For a brand, they have total control versus a real person who comes with potential controversy, their own demands, their own opinions," McGrath added.
"We were taken aback by the skyrocketing rates influencers charge nowadays. That got us thinking, 'What if we just create our own influencer?'" said Diana Nunez, co-founder of the Barcelona-based agency The Clueless, which created Aitana. "The rest is history. We unintentionally created a monster. A beautiful one, though." Over the past few years, there have been high-profile partnerships between luxury brands and virtual influencers, including Kim Kardashian's make-up line KKW Beauty with Noonoouri, and Louis Vuitton with Ayayi. Instagram analysis of an H&M advert featuring virtual influencer Kuki found that it reached 11 times more people and resulted in a 91 per cent decrease in cost per person remembering the advert, compared with a traditional ad. "It is not influencing purchase like a human influencer would, but it is driving awareness, favorability and recall for the brand," said Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy, and former head of Meta's creator innovations team. "Influencers themselves have a lot of negative associations related to being fake or superficial, which makes people feel less concerned about the concept of that being replaced with AI or virtual influencers," said Rebecca McGrath, associate director for media and technology at Mintel.
"For a brand, they have total control versus a real person who comes with potential controversy, their own demands, their own opinions," McGrath added.
Awww, poor influencers... (chuckles) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awww, poor influencers... (chuckles) (Score:4, Interesting)
No, they're addicted to the money and the fake lifestyle. So they'll just go to OnlyFans and sell themselves more directly. But at least it's a bit more honest!
Re: Awww, poor influencers... (chuckles) (Score:2)
Then they'll figure out that the OF market is saturated with mediocre bland stuff.
Time for them to get a real productive job.
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What? No! You can't do that! Real work? Like... having to actually DO something?
Who do you think I am?
I'm a celebrity, get me IN THERE!
Re:Awww, poor influencers... (chuckles) (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, but it won't be long until OF has fake errrr "virtual" influencers too.
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Re:Awww, poor influencers... (chuckles) (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't that run right up against the uncanny valley though? Maybe I'm the outlier, but I'd rather watch genuine amateurs with their low production quality setups. I mean, it's porn, I'm not actually handing money over for any of this. It's not THAT important.
It's pretty amusing to see influencers cry that AI is taking business opportunities away, considering they are just shills for the advertising world. The worst thing about them is they "influence" young people into thinking that is some how a viable career path. It's like trying to become a professional sports player, expect at least those sports players tend to actually get college degrees alongside playing sports.
For example, do a search for Joshua Dobbs nasa. This guy played for the Minnesota Viking AND has a degree in aerospace engineering and interned with nasa twice. Pretty awesome if you ask me. Someone you could genuinely look up to.
So pardon me if I can't shed a tear for these "influencers".
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Doesn't that run right up against the uncanny valley though?
No, lots of people already watch hentai and other fully fake porn (remember rule 34?). Human sexual arousal really isn't that hard to achieve.
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Doesn't that run right up against the uncanny valley though?
Porn tends to be the technology leader. I expect it will be the first to leave the uncanny valley.
Maybe I'm the outlier, but I'd rather watch genuine amateurs with their low production quality setups.
What makes you think AI unable to accommodate that perspective?
Video games will likely be a close second. They will share some of the underlying technical research.
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So 'scuse me if I feel no pity for influencers, they can cry on someone else's shoulder.
I think this is wrong framing. Human influencers are easy to understand - they are after clout and money. AI influencers are less clear, but they are absolutely more likely to manipulate their audience. So even if there is no other motives, you end up with an audience that manipulated more.
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I think this is wrong framing. Human influencers are easy to understand - they are after clout and money
You are correct, but still, these days, human influencers are nothing more good-looking advertisers. So might as well use AI to do the same thing. That is fine by me.
But influencers are everywhere, here in the US, soon many people will be bombarded by political influencers. Many will be be pushing boldface lies. Still many people here will believe them like they are some type of god.
People really need to stop being "brainwashed" to do what others want them to do :)
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Wrong, that will still be a side project funded by the AI. Sadly.
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Scammers will always be scammers. Influencers will just turn to scamming people illegally.
Finding it hard to care (Score:5, Interesting)
"Influencers themselves have a lot of negative associations related to being fake or superficial, which makes people feel less concerned about the concept of that being replaced with AI or virtual influencers," said Rebecca McGrath, associate director for media and technology at Mintel.
I understand the argument that if we don't care about these early disruptions no one will care when it comes around to my profession, but I still find it hard to feel sorry for these influencers. All AI influencers will do is allow people who are creative but not particularly attractive or charismatic to create avatars who are. We are a long way from these AI avatars being able to show real creativity without human input.
AI avatars seems like a big improvement to me.
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This is exactly the sort of disruption I expect to hit Hollywood in a few years. I eagerly hope that within my lifetime we'll see the demise of celebrity culture, or at least a good chunk of it.
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That was (one of) the biggest issues during the strike.
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Sort of. That discussion focused on likenesses of real people and the rights to those likenesses. It did very little to address the issue being talked about here where the image of a person is wholly fictitious, being based on no one. With performance capture and AI speech synthesis, virtual avatars will be the “actors” we see on screen in future generations. No need for messy actors with their messy lives and messy requests to ever appear on screen at all.
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We already have that today, and in a more extreme form, no less. Every time Spider-Man shows up on a cereal box, a Disney character shows up in an educational video, or we cringe as Mountain Dew engages in another Halo-themed partnership with Microsoft, we see exactly what you’re talking about. The only difference is that it’ll be harder for virtual influencers to stand out because (a) this technology democratizes the ability to make virtual influencers, so they’ll be dime-a-dozen, which i
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I understand the argument that if we don't care about these early disruptions
These disruptions are not "early". They are a continuation of disruptions that started with the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic, to the invention of the flush toilet that destroyed the jobs of many chambermaids. There have always been disruptions in the economy, and societies that have embraced change have done far better than those that resist it.
no one will care when it comes around to my profession
True, but AI is likely to boost your productivity and increase your salary. The people who once would have been chambermaids and switchboard operators ar
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Either way, I think the influencers should form a union and strike until these companies stop using AI. It will solve everything, guaranteed!
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I would wholeheartedly support their strike!
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> There have always been disruptions in the economy
Those disruptions lasted for a generation and caused people to starve to death.
> True, but AI is likely to boost your productivity and increase your salary.
That is true, but if you repeat the cycle enough many times, every time reducing employees and increasing the salary for the remaining, there will be very few people on the top while others have no salary at all. It won't be enough to use AI to boost your productivity on the second round, because e
Re: Finding it hard to care (Score:3)
Some of the features are not being transferred to the internet, they are just being dropped. For instance, having a local branch with a manager who knows your banking history will encourage you to stay a loyal customer because you can call in and resolve problems, arrange loans, open additional accounts etc. These are difficult beans to count, so they are ignored and the branch and manager just look like expenses to be cut.
One Huge Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, nowadays job reconversion is super hard. Far more likely people will get crap job , gig economy, be super fragile economically, etc...
Secondely, for the time period you are speaking of, there were very obviously other type of job opening coming up. That is emphatically NOT the case nowadays where well paid job are lost and don't come back.
Re:Finding it hard to care (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but AI is likely to boost your productivity and increase your salary. The people who once would have been chambermaids and switchboard operators are mostly employed in better jobs today. ATMs caused employment in banking to go up and financial industry salaries rose faster than the rest of the economy.
That's half the truth.
All those "better" jobs require better qualifications. So with each of those "disruptions" (is that the new word for industrial revolution?) the entry bar is raised leaving behind people. And the more often this happens, the more people fall into that category.
Didn't they try to turn whole unemployed mining towns into "webdesigners" in the early 2000s? See how that went...
Re:Finding it hard to care (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that people are not fungible. Every time you destroy jobs, it's always the lowest qualified ones. Always. Every time some "revolution" in work eliminated jobs by replacing them with machinery, it meant the end of jobs that people could do that can't do jobs that require better qualification. Automation did away low qualification jobs and the people displaced from their "put pieces A and B on position C and D then press button, now repeat for the rest of your shift" jobs could not simply become mechanics and engineers to maintain those machines. Yes, some could, most didn't have the qualification. And you can't qualify people who don't have the mental or physical capacity to become qualified. It just doesn't work that way.
Else that ridiculous notion that coal miners we don't need anymore could now become programmers because we do need those wouldn't have been a meme.
Likewise, you can't move an influenza whose only qualification is a spotless face and a grin and the ability to chirp "Hi bunnies!" into a camera into a position where they tune and "enhance" AI performance. Cute cat videos bring in billions of views, but not a single cat ever has made one.
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Problem is, they don't.
Until recently, yes, displaced people found work in new industries that also needed no/low qualification. Farm hands were replaced by tractors and machine harvest, they moved into the cities and found a job in factories. Factories automated away those jobs, they found jobs in the service industry.
The problem this time around is that there aren't any new jobs generated for these no/low skill laborers. And yes, this becomes more and more of a problem as we speak. The IQ entry level for
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So what are you doing?
Breathing! Existing! Somebody pay me for this!!
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> negative associations related to being fake or superficial
Influencers are someone (or something) with the power to affect the buying habits or quantifiable actions of others by uploading some form of original—often sponsored—content to social media platforms.
Manipulator is a person who uses devious means to exploit, control, or otherwise influence others to their advantage.
Devious = Cunning or deceiving, not straightforward or honest, not frank. Roundabout, circuitous, deviating from the di
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All AI influencers will do is allow people who are creative but not particularly attractive or charismatic to create avatars who are. We are a long way from these AI avatars being able to show real creativity without human input.
And so are "Influencers"
There are tons of people out there making fantastic creative content. (my favorite ones on youtube for example Townsends 18th century cooking or Technology Connections)
But no one would categorize them as "Influencers"
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Newsflash: Nobody will care when it comes around to your profession. Why would anyone?
This isn't the Nazis rounding up people for extermination.
Re: Finding it hard to care (Score:2)
... and nothing of value was lost. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:... and nothing of value was lost. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always took influencer as a euphemism for talentless freeloader.
https://www.boredpanda.com/soc... [boredpanda.com]
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Meh I dunno, most of them seem to suck even at that. If I wanted to make a living on youtube, I could probably do a better job than most of them without even having to promote myself. Shit, just making programming videos or let's play videos would do better. Totally not worth it though, the pay would be total dog shit in the same range as what rsilvergun makes, all while spending more time and being less productive than my current job.
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"Influencer" has always been my reminder that it's spelled wrongly and should be spelled "influenza".
These people are a disease. And I think AI has found a cure.
Sooo, only 2% (Score:2)
faker than normal influencers. Good to know.
Stealing? Theft??? What is it that is lost? (Score:3, Interesting)
For there to be "stealing" then something but be made to disappear.
Nobody has "stolen" anything here and there's no "theft" here either.
Simply LLMs (AI is not intelligence so stop pretending it is).
NOTHING was removed from any premises. Nothing has been stolen.
Simply artificially generated text from large language models is better
at accomplishing the goals of their sponsors than the dipshits who used
to do it. Sorry, Kardashians.
No theft. No steal. Just improved quality, which the sponsors are happy
to sponsor.
Oh the inhumanity! (Score:5, Funny)
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Can't be worse than using an Hollywood actor as POTUS?
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The difference is a Hollywood actor is more than just a Hollywood actor. That individual will also have their own ideas, motives, and viewpoints. A chatbot can, potentially, be tailored to perfectly represent any particular sponsor. I expect in the near future that there will be chatbots acting as the voice and presence of all major corporations. The job of the PR department will be to ensure that it remains tuned to express the current will of the management.
Which is worse? (Score:5, Funny)
Which is worse? That there is a 21st century occupation called "internet influencer", or that one of the first occupations generative AI directly threatens is influencers. Oh, the irony.
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Gives a new meaning to the threat "shut up or I replace you with a small script".
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Another interesting irony is that the "original" influencer, Kim Kardashian, apparently now hires another influencer to increase her awareness! It should be noted that the whole influencer affair is basically female. Stupidity for the masses.
World's smallest violin (Score:3)
Companies are exploring new areas of marketing using the latest tech because it is cheaper then paying real people. People are surprised at this?
Also why does it matter that Aitana Lopez is pink-haired ??
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It matters that it is pink haired, because it give you a clue to who is being influenced. Young, female, pink-haired suggest that those being influenced are rather young people with non-consensus views.
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Also why does it matter that Aitana Lopez is pink-haired ??
Because it's a mark of her rebel authenticity, just like it is for (squints), er, millions of real young people ...
Not sure this is actually new (Score:5, Insightful)
'Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as haircare line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria's Secret. Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media -- despite the fact that she is entirely fictional. Aitana is a "virtual influencer" created using artificial intelligence tools, one of the hundreds of digital avatars that have broken into the growing $21 billion content creator economy.'
Japan has had V-Tubers for years - they may even predate the rise of "influencers". The V-Tubers have been doing all these things for a long time.
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IIUC, Japan's also had artificial rock stars, that appear in "hologram" shows. AI probably isn't quite up to that this month.
What I'm waiting for is AI song writers. The lyrics frequently don't mean anything reasonable anyway, once you subtract the emotions, so "hallucinations" shouldn't pose a problem. Within a year or so I expect all plausible songs to have been written. Then we can wait for copyright to expire.
Re: Not sure this is actually new (Score:2)
There is a VERY popular ABBA hologram concert in Europe, and I think someone is going to do one in America for another band (The Rolling Stones?)...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
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Is it really holograms? I assumed it was some more traditional projection.
Lovely! (Score:2)
The real world can dispose of both "influencers" and "followers" in one swift stroke.
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Maybe we should tell them that earth is going to be eaten by a giant space goat and put them on the same spaceship with the marketing consultants and telephone disinfectants...
Best do it before someone books a seat for me there, too...
I'm fairly confident (Score:2, Flamebait)
The existence of 'influencer' as a thing, never mind a viable career (for humans or AI) is not something humanity should be proud of.
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It's a rock worth living under, and one you should hold ready in case you meet a salesman.
well, at least they are immune to swatting. (Score:3)
virtual cops aren't going to bust into a virtual house while they're on livecam.
Although they could do bad things to the offices of the company I guess. Internet douchebags know no bounds.
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virtual cops aren't going to bust into a virtual house while they're on livecam.
Why not? They can go in shooting and for 5$ fee you can see them murdering the avatar live. More so, this doesn't have to disrupt anyone else's show as this can be tailored to the paying viewer.
It's crap feeding on crap (Score:2)
Useless crap being pushed by talent-free people and now stupid bots
It's becoming an accreting ball of crap, that seems to be adding mass at an accelerating rate
Maybe it will collapse into a black hole of crap or explode into a craptastic, supercrapnova
No one is immune (Score:2)
Diana Nunez, Becky Owen, Rebecca McGrath... AI is coming for you too.
Still people... (Score:2)
There are still people working to decide the content and make the posts.
What I don't understand are the followers...
Re:Still people... (Score:4, Interesting)
Some people are just desperate to have friends that they don't care that their "friend" is just a fake one that sells them junk.
It's like blind dating a sales person [youtube.com]. Only that in this case, you don't get told in the end that you're just here for a sales pitch and that nobody really is your friend.
Yes, it's kinda sad.
Blade Walker, I'm too old to run (Score:2)
Make her bang-able and I won't care if she's AI.
Count me as a fan. (Score:2)
Influencers are being shown in stark fashion just how worthless and replaceable they are.
People don't follow Kim Kardashian because they give a shit what she has to say. They follow her because she has a great ass and likes to show it off.
That's all fine and good, but ass is fungible.
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I'm pretty sure a bunch of people just follow her in the hope that those balloons pop during some streamed live event.
Artificial celebrities is a new (easy ?) market. (Score:2)
I've thought about trying myself out in this space. I know a thing or two about marketing, digital media production, video editing & compositing, 3D and still image editing.
Now with a well guided/prompted AI doing the gruntwork of generating portraits and shots of some virtual lady (or guy) opening an AI model agency without having to pay too much for real models unless for reference images seems quite a neat way to make some money. Suggested we try this out to a buddy of mine a few weeks back. It's sti
Here is how to create her, technically. (Score:3, Informative)
In a video even someone with a short attention span can grasp [invidious.private.coffee].
Definitely has that "uncanny" look (Score:2)
Maybe the young generation does not care, but this creation does not look like a person to me.
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You haven't looked at many influenzas, have you? That's normal.
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I have looked at a few, not many admittedly. Never got that vibe.
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Quite frankly, they all look artificial and fake to me.
Probably because they are.
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Maybe the young generation does not care, but this creation does not look like a person to me.
The younger generation definitely had much less opportunity to train their natural neural networks on the recognition of actual human beings. Those who have mostly seen other humans (and simulations thereof) on screens may recognize those depictions as "the normal", and real humans around them as "uncanny".
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Interesting idea. So we may end up with people that will have trouble going outside because other people look "fake" to them.
view from the last century (Score:2)
The concept of "influencers" is almost as stupid as "ripped jeans." What's the point of that? Paying extra to buy clothing that is pre-damaged? Does wearing ripped jeans mean that they're trying to express solidarity with poor people? Why pay $200 for pre-damaged clothing when you could just buy lunch for that
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The thing with the ripped jeans is fashion. Don't question it, it's not supposed to make sense.
I think the reason influenzas are so popular is simply that young people are looking for someone to tell them what is "right". Back when I was a kid, this was pretty easy. Our celebrities were actually able to do something. Sing, dance, act, whatever. Since today, celebrity only means "too stupid for real work and too lazy to pick up dole", that one is out the window. Politicians aren't exactly working as role mod
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Yes it is.
But that's what today's youth has.
Idiotic fabricated news story by the AI industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Really. 200,000 followers? You could buy those with some money and half a clue.
How is the engagement for this fake influencer whose account is just a bunch of obviously fake images created by midjourney? The images are all framed exactly the same way, with slight variations in the background. Who is watching this stupid spam?
Whose money are they stealing? Are they stealing advertisement money for shampoo and conditioner? Diet pills? Counseling services? They arenâ(TM)t stealing anyones viewership for ads, all they are doing is gaming the system.
The real story here is that you can now game the ad revenue system by creating totally fake AI generated content, followed by faked and contrived viewership. Just for what? So you can write a news story about it?
This reminds me of the recent problem that youtube had, where it was spammed with fake channels run by bots making endless videos titled, âoeremaking star wars as guy ritchieâ or âoeremaking breaking bad in italyâ, or endless variations of movies, countries, and tv shows.
Those obviously AI generated videos ended up spamming youtube recommended pages. It was virtually impossible to stop by end users, so youtube had to literally start shutting the channels down themselves.
The real problem here is not AI stealing anyones jobs. The real problem is AIâ(TM)s potential to completely destroy the utility of existing institutions by plugging them up with endless torrents of computer generated spam content.
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How is the engagement for this fake influencer whose account is just a bunch of obviously fake images created by midjourney? The images are all framed exactly the same way, with slight variations in the background.
Care to point out how this is different from human influenzas?
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It's not a joke. These people are a disease. And I refuse to classify them as anything but what they are.
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If it destroys the "value" equation of advertising generally, I'd call that an unalloyed good.
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"Who is watching this stupid spam?"
Women are. The whole influences business is based on the stupidity among women.
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"The whole influencer business is based on the stupidity among women".
Full circle (Score:2)
Now we only need AI-generated virtual followers and we have gone full circle.
Next step is the electric Monk. ( --> Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency)
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But you can already buy virtual followers.
Ok, not AI generated, but if they express any form of intelligence, they'd immediately stick out and might get banned.
Re: Full circle (Score:2)
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as long as they are happy with virtual money.....
Otherwise: No harm done when that whole cycle implodes.
Virtual influenzas (Score:2)
The first time a disease has spread from carbon to silicon.
I'm never sure ... (Score:2)
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1) It's a new story, to take it with a pound of salt.
2) This "job" isn't much like yours. Others being replaced are. The point of this story is to reduce the disapproval of those other jobs being automated.
3) Automating jobs is good, as long as you care for those who are injured in the process. But we prefer to avoid that expense.
So what are they saying? (Score:2)
Too bad , soo sad (Score:2)
About time! (Score:2)
This is blatant fraud. (Score:2)
Not exactly hands-off AI (Score:2)
There's this romantic notion that popular influencers get there by magic, that they just "happen" to go viral. In real life, influencers get their status by doing old-fashioned marketing. They pay for advertising, and they pay for preferred placement where their channel will catch your eye. It all comes down to money and determination and knowhow.
This doesn't change "because AI." For every successful AI-generated "influencer" channel, there is somebody (a team of humans) behind the marketing of that channe
Boo Hoo (Score:2)
'Fake' social media 'influencers' being replaced by actual fake influencers?
That's a distinction without a difference IMHO
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