21st-century influencers need an engaged audience and a style that makes you stop scrolling and pay attention.
But one thing they don’t have to be is real.
Virtual influencers (VIs) are what they sound like—digital avatars that only exist online, and who contract with brands to promote products that exist IRL.
Virtual influencers have been around for a good few decades. Before Lil Miquela took centerstage on Instagram, Hatsune Miku was selling Toyota Corollas and Domino’s, Barbie was joining the VTuber ranks, and Crazy Frog was…well, Crazy Frog.
Recently, though, there’s been a resurgence of interest in the potentials of VIs, thanks to rapidly evolving AI tech. Some contemporary virtual influencers actually use AI, while others are the product of more conventional digital animation.
Part of the appeal is to bottom lines: Brands could collaborate with multiple VIs at lower rates as opposed to what seasoned human influencers charge.
Or they could develop their own in-house VIs, tapping into AI to minimize animation costs for Instagram videos and reels.
The buzz is palpable—as are anxieties around human content creators being replaced or sidelined.
So just how likely are VIs to disrupt the influencer industry? And to just what extent is AI involved in generating virtual influencer personalities?
I spoke with Jason Brandt, CMO at the PR platform PRophet—which uses generative AI to help brands connect more effectively with (human) influencers—to find out:
Let’s take a real close look at virtual influencers.
From mega-celebrities to lifestyle gurus to YouTube gaming vloggers, influencers create meaningful personal connections to their audiences based on perceived authenticity, relatability and shared intimacy.
This personal connection drives followers’ trust in influencers in ways that reflect real-life relationships. They offer a way for brands to navigate a world that’s increasingly critical of manufactured messaging.
“Consumers in their twenties, thirties, even early forties—they don’t trust brands,” says Jason Brandt, CMO of PRophet. “They want to receive recommendations from their peers, from individuals that share interests, whose voices they trust more than a corporate entity.”
The brand then becomes a mediator in an extremely human interaction between their audience and a relevant content creator or influencer.
It’s an “incredibly attractive” position for the brand to be in, Brandt says, which is why the space has grown “incrementally and consistently over the past 10 years.”
The jury is still out on whether virtual influencers can replicate this sort of genuine connection strongly enough to inspire engagement and drive action.
“People go to their favorite YouTube creators for fashion, or their favorite TikTok creators to get a reprieve from their day,” Brandt says. “It's unclear whether an AI-created influencer will have that role today, whether they’ll become authentic sources of inspiration or entertainment.”
Brandt isn’t ruling out a future in which VIs become commonplace, but he’s not seeing it happening at scale in today’s influencer marketing world.
“There’s definitely experimentation,” he adds, “but it’s not something we see taking over human interactions any time soon.”
Brands looking to use virtual influencers have a few options.
Let’s take a look at some of the factors to keep in mind if you’re contemplating an influencer who’s made of pixels rather than flesh-and-blood.
As HUNTER’s Chief Influencer Donatella Allen notes: “Virtual influencers’ carefully curated images allow for greater messaging control, alignment with brand values, and less risk of controversy throughout the duration of the partnership.”
Brandt agrees that it could be attractive to brands to create a persona exactly aligned with their needs. But he remains cautious about what such a persona could imply.
Virtual influencers basically involve “creating a mannequin with certain physical characteristics based on a profile the brand wants to present,” Brandt says. “They have to be very sure about what choices go into making that image, whether it be gender, race, age, or fashion sensibilities."
It’s a point well-taken in view of the potential backlash that could await virtual influencers.
Consider SheerLuxe, who recently unveiled Reem, their latest AI-enhanced, Arab “team member”, to raucous criticism.
Modeled as a “beautiful, skinny, ethnically ambiguous woman,” SheerLuxe stood accused of contributing to the underrepresentation of (real) people of color in the media.
According to the Harvard Business Review, virtual influencer Lil Miquela only charges about $9000 per post—and with over 3M followers on Instagram and TikTok apiece, she might be the most popular influencer out there. A similarly seasoned human influencer with a high follower count might charge in the realm of $250,000.
Virtual influencers remain much more unusual than humans, and their unexpectedness could help pause the scroll. That said, the jury is still out on whether likes and comments on VI content translate to brand loyalty or conversions.
Part of this seems to be the novelty of engaging with the uncommon aesthetic and CGI. But it remains to be seen whether VIs can maintain their freshness if more and more brands were to adopt them; researchers warn that “the luster of VIs may diminish once the technological novelty wears off.”
Reem’s case, however, points to a potentially interesting differentiation in audience reception. More realistic VIs seem likelier to inspire backlash on the basis of (literally) unattainable beauty standards or human-replacement anxieties.
On the other hand, anime-inspired or non-humanoid VIs may be able to hold on to the novelty factor longer. And a bright pink sausage creature is unlikely to raise the same social and political concerns as the “Reembot.”
Popular virtual influencers have developed engaging narratives to keep audiences hooked.
Noonoouri’s a vegan activist, Casas Bahias is all about environmental issues and gaming, and Seraphine’s a magical empath.
None of them have to be constrained by language or travel budgets either—they’re globally accessible and entertaining.
Of course, some sensitive stories and experiences fall flat in the hands of a VI. Zara Shatavari, a virtual influencer from India, purports to be dealing with the very real struggles of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) and depression.
Yet this VI’s airbrushed, model-esque aesthetic—and the fact that she doesn’t actually exist—might be offensive to followers with actual physical and mental health challenges.
Though the AI regulatory landscape is nascent, brands will have to eventually make ethical and legal decisions about transparency—disclosing to their audiences just how much of their creation is AI-generated.
That said, at present there’s no way of knowing how much AI processing goes into generating the images and videos on VI pages.
That may come as a surprise given how loudly AI capabilities are touted—to the point that AI and VI keep getting used synonymously in the digital influencer space.
Lil Miquela, for instance, is a product of Brud, a transmedia LA-based startup that calls itself a software and AI company. Yet, as Forbes points out, Brud’s LinkedIn is almost completely populated by visual effects artists and producers.
In other words: Lil Miquela’s wispy hair likely stays in place not through cutting-edge AI video generation, but thanks to a comparatively old-fashioned animation team that builds the videos.
Other VIs are more obviously the product of AI, and they’re often less polished. AI agency Bracai presents their digital supermodel Shudu Gram as completely AI-generated. (Like other agencies in the space, Bracai’s pretty tight-lipped about the specifics of their processes.)
But Shudu’s jankier movements and bland video backgrounds, even in brand collaborations, lend to the claim. Other fully AI-generated influencers use still images and repeated shots instead of dynamic video.
AI tech quickly hits limitations when it comes to building coherent videos, and even maintaining background consistency. For brands hoping to connect with and engage audiences, this could make for a less than compelling narrative.
The tech is rapidly evolving though; the wonky, Sora-created videos being shared on social media today might look positively archaic in three months. Watch this space!
Brandt points out that while PRophet isn’t in the VI business, its influencer marketing tools are quite AI-driven.
“We do embrace AI within our platforms,” he says. “AI facilitates the discovery of the right influencer for a brand. Our AI processes can vet a creator to make sure their content is brand-safe. We can go back 10 years into a creator's back catalog and see everything that they've created.”
The important thing is to identify use cases where AI can solve problems for clients, especially in the VI context.
Brandt sees obvious advantages to using AI-generated personalities to deliver “cut-and-dry” brand content. For instance, AI avatars can conduct educational product demos for beauty or tech, for instance.
“Where a brand wants to put a human face on information rather than it being text on a website, that's where we see the use cases now in favor of AI content creation,” Brandt says.
And while he doesn’t see AI-powered VIs replacing humans any time soon, Brandt says PRophet takes the evolution of AI capabilities very seriously.
“A brand that wants to make an impact on an audience through emotive, choreographed back-and-forth relationships, will probably find its needs are currently best served through a human,” he says.
But with all things AI, the landscape is changing on a weekly basis.
“In the future,” Brandt notes, “if the data shows audiences are becoming more receptive to messages from an AI-generated influencer, then we would reassess our position.”
