You don’t have to be real to score brand deals as an influencer

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Milla Sofia lives in Helsinki, spend weekends in luxury yachts and recently signed a fashion agreement with a Finnish telephone accessories store. Nor does it exist, not in the real world. She is an influencer generated by AI, a pure creation of software with good lighting, designed to help sell products and generate money for its developer.

The synthetic influencer has a well -organized Instagram page full of photos of stylized outfits, beach photos and confident legends that sound exactly like the problem of model companies to influence partners explaining what to write for their sponsored messages. The brand’s ambassador AI claims to be “always on version” after studying at “the University of Life” and specializing in “self-adaptive learning and data focused on data”. Of course, she did it. The digital model has nearly 324,000 Instagram subscribers and thousands of others on X.

Milla Sofia was created to be the face of a single Finnish electronic trade brand. The project turned upside down when people started to really engage with AI. The number of followers, comments and dates requests, among other measures, convinced the developers that their AI employee had greater potential than a sewn personality of fast engineering and Pinterest articles could suggest.

Influence of AI

It is far from unique as a fully produced in AI. Lil Miquela, another entirely fictitious influencer, has raised more than two million Instagram followers and obtained brand partnerships with major technological and fashion brands, thanks in part to her songs shared on Spotify.

And there are more facts all the time, produced by developers, digital artists or marketing teams with a plan that does not imply paying a human model or influencer.

The Lil Miquela team would have billed tens of thousands of dollars per position. Some CGI influencers draw more than six figures per year, and they never call the patients, never ask for an increase and do not require craft services on the set. It is influence marketing less human influencer.

For all the novelty, the very real money guarantees that more influencers of IA will arise and that the brands will pay for them. Besides the price, you can see the appeal of the idea to a brand.

AI influencers have no bad days. They do not get involved in scandals. They do not develop a sudden taste for political sockets that could alienate half of your customers. They say what you tell them to say and wear what you choose. They are infinitely safe because they have no soul to rebel.

It is like old -fashioned corporate mascots but brought to a new level, combining a total artifice with vogue for “authentic and real” in marketing through influencers.

Whether it is an abuse of implicit confidence between companies and consumers is questionable. Many subscribers might think that Milla is real, and certainly, many have complimented her dress in a photo, perhaps imagining a connection. When they discover that they just complimented pixels shaped by a Finnish man with a talent for writing guests to Midjourney, will they feel betrayed, or simply accept it as the 21st century advertising magic?

Social media have never been of reality, of course. But there was still one human at the other end of the selfie stick in most poles of influence. With AI influencers, the feedback loop seems broken. You no longer respond to a person, just a product with a cunning disguise in person.

The brilliance of AI influencers is strong at the moment, but it could fade. As much as we love varnish, people also constantly speak of the thirst for authenticity. And if this synthetic smile can no longer sell you things, companies could simply crawl their human partners.