Influencer marketing is becoming more adaptable, imaginative, and economical thanks to AI influencers who are fusing cutting edge technology with intriguing new storytelling techniques.
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Give Brands Greater Creativity
Influencers powered by AI are quite configurable. They are not constrained by the laws of physics, time, or space. Their makers may modify them with a few lines of code, giving them the ability to appear and behave whatever they like.
“Miquela, for instance, is always present,” stated Kahn, whose business bought Brud, the firm that created Lil Miquela, in 2021. She has the ability to talk to audiences in five different languages, move fluidly between reality and fantasy, and be in five distinct places at once.
Because of this flexibility, firms are able to sell their products in far more inventive ways and push the limits of what is feasible in terms of advertising.
Give Brands Greater Command Over Communications
According to Ryan Offman, AI engineer and head of scientific communications at deepfake detection business Deep Media, marketers have “a lot more control over what they say and do” since AI influencers are so adjustable, he told Built In. Due to their own emotions, viewpoints, and objectives, human influencers may produce material that isn’t always in line with a brand’s mission. Artificial intelligence influences can be quickly corrected, and they only say and do what they are expressly trained to say and do.
Thanks to new tools released by social media networks themselves, this has becoming easier to perform. For instance, TikTok offers both stock characters and customisable avatars that can be altered and dubbed in numerous languages, enabling marketers to produce commercials on the app using their own AI-generated influencers.
According to Alison Bringé, chief marketing officer of marketing analytics firm Launchmetrics, businesses can “dictate what the content is going to look like, what it’s going to say, and how it’s going to be placed” using AI influencers, she told Built In. “They’re not as dependent on other people.”
From the standpoint of brand safety, this is advantageous. Human influencers are subject to reversal, misinterpretation, and controversy, all of which have the potential to harm a brand’s reputation. Influencers are not immune to controversy, but they are less likely to get embroiled in it because of how well they regulate their personalities and material.
“You never know what can happen to an individual in the real world,” Kahn remarked. “Collaborating with the appropriate virtual influencers provides a certain level of security and safety.”
Less Expensive Than Influencers in Human
AI influencers are often less expensive to deal with than their human counterparts with comparable following numbers, despite the fact that prices vary greatly. A 2024 Harvard Business Review study states that a human influencer with a million or more followers might price a company up to $250,000 each post, whereas Lil Miquela, who has 2.6 million Instagram followers, costs just $9,000. But in the end, the price is mostly determined by the influencer’s and the specific job’s popularity.
Are Simpler to Expand
Companies may quickly establish a number of virtual influencers to reach particular markets and demographics. And unlike human influencers, those influencers are able to produce material and interact with followers whenever they want.
According to Sienna Santer, a creative strategist at the marketing firm Buttermilk, “there are no human rights laws, and there are no restrictions on how many hours they can work,” she told Built In. Because AI influencers lack creative control, you can obtain precisely what you want from them and the material can be supplied much more quickly. Actually, all that has to be done is modify the code without interacting with a human.
Make an impression in a crowded market
Content is flooded social media. Statistics from 2024 show that over 270 videos are uploaded to TikTok every second, while over 1 billion photographs are shared on Instagram daily. Being unique is essential for firms trying to market their goods on these platforms, and working with AI influencers is one method to achieve so.
Bringé asserted that “brands need to think outside the box with how they connect with consumers.” “These influencers are meeting the need to kind of connect with the customer in various contexts, share various narratives, and guide them through the funnel.”
There is also research to support this approach. An AI influencer was shown to be just as likely to be followed by customers as a human influencer, according to a research published in the European Journal of Marketing. Additionally, it was shown that customers were more willing to discuss AI influencers with others, which made them a useful tool for marketers looking to create buzz. Clothing company H&M had a “11x increase in ad recall”—people who remember viewing the commercial—when it deployed virtual influencer Kuki in an ad campaign, according to another Meta research. This was in comparison to “ads with campaign video only.”
Cautions Regarding AI Influencers
According to the majority of marketing professionals, social media users—especially younger users—demand authenticity. It’s debatable exactly what constitutes “authentic,” but the highly manicured, idealized environment of these virtual individuals doesn’t seem to fit the bill. AI influencers’ blatant artificiality can have a number of detrimental effects on society and ethics.
Avoid the Human Perspective
Instead of using social media as a platform for simple interpersonal connections, younger consumers utilize it as a search engine. Influencers are looked to by them for advice on a wide range of topics, including what to wear, where to vacation, and which political causes to support.
Artificial intelligence influencers’ input, which consists of combinations of pixels and code with no true grasp of what it is to be alive or interest in current affairs, might come out as phony and superficial. What possible skincare knowledge could an AI-generated cartoon pushing cosmetics possibly possess? How could “Black lives matter” be completely understood by a digitally created Black person?
According to Santer, “being a human is very hard to replicate.” “AI influencers can’t really replicate that instant connection we feel with somebody who’s going through the same lived experience as us to the same extent.”
Are More Difficult to Trust by Customers
Authenticity may be particularly difficult when it’s not evident if an influencer is real or not. Virtual influencers Shudu and Rozy have both been confused for actual persons before, despite making it extremely evident on their social media channels that they are synthetic. Furthermore, a good number of other realistic-looking figures lack this transparency. It is expected that the sophistication of generative AI would make it more challenging to discern between fake and authentic content on the internet.
Offman stated that it’s critical to identify material as AI-generated and to fully disclose when an influencer uses AI, especially in order to prevent misinformation from spreading and to build trust with social media users.
It’s also starting to become required. Both the AI Act from the EU and the AI executive order signed by US President Biden require explicit disclosure of content created by AI. Furthermore, social media sites like Instagram and TikTok have started mandating that any material created with AI have a disclaimer.
It might dehumanize women and people of color.
The majority of today’s leading AI influencers are female, youthful, and slender. And a lot of them are treated like sexual commodities. People are now worried that these characters’ propagation of damaging gender stereotypes and unattainable beauty standards may have a detrimental impact on kids, teenagers, and adults.
For women of color, who many of the most well-known influencers are patterned after, these worries are much more pressing. Shudu, for instance, has been referred to as a “white man’s digital projection of real-life Black womanhood” because of her symmetrical features, dark complexion, and slender frame, which were all influenced by the Princess of South Africa Barbie doll.
The use of Black and multiracial women’s “physical appearance and embodiment” as material for the development of virtual influencers, according to writer and senior lecturer in digital media studies at Cardiff University Francesca Sobande, is the most recent instance of the ongoing “commodification of Blackness” in consumer culture, in which Black people are objectified and trivialized in the name of corporate profit.
Brands may “try to position themselves in close proximity to Blackness, without having to meaningfully engage with, work with, credit, and/or support Black people,” she told Built In, by partnering with and creating these influencers. “There’s a lot of room for the [AI influencer] world to be depicted as varied, inclusive, and equitable—while simultaneously disguising and legitimizing repressive power, gender, and racial regimes.”