AI influencers have star signs and childhoods – and earn more than you
Alex Laine’s gut says that Arsenal will win the Premier League this summer, no doubt about it.
The Londoner loves football – her first Instagram post last October was her outside the Emirates Arsenal Station.
‘Arsenal have a long list of celeb fans, like Anne Hathaway and even Piers Morgan – he’s actually one of my favourites,’ Alex tells Metro. ‘I’d love to have a photo with him at a game.’
But the thing is, Alex will never be able to get a photo with Morgan at a match. She’s not even real – she’s the UK’s first ‘AI influencer’.
Not an influencer that specialises in AI, but is AI, a bunch of machine learning algorithms and statistical models.
There are more AI influencers giving skincare tips and posing with matcha lattes than there are people in New York, according to OpenArt.
The AI video generation platform expects these nine million computer-generated personas to rake in $30 billion in 2026.
‘It’s exciting, particularly because my purpose is to inspire women of all ages to follow and play football – or any sport for that matter,’ ‘Alex’ tells Metro.
‘Spain’s Aitana Lopez is the biggest AI Influencer in the world, and I want to be as big as her in the UK.
‘My fans are amazing – it’s all about sharing my passion points and fostering a connection with them, whether it be watching Arsenal, cute coffee dates with friends, or sharing new clothes.’
Alex is one of the 2,000 AI influencers taking part in the world’s first ‘virtual persona Oscars’: the AI Personality of the Year Awards.
The five-week challenge, launched by OpenArt with the creator subscription platform Fanvue, will end in May.
With a total prize fund of $90,000, categories include AI entertainers, comedians and fitness experts.
But what exactly are AI influencers, and how much do they earn?
One top AI influencer earns $50,000 a month
The Clueless brings Aitana and Alex to life.
‘We created Alex to be a role model that other girls could aspire to, to see a girl who’s into sports,’ the advertising agency’s creative director Andy García tells Metro.
‘Creating’ an AI influencer involves first asking what people care about and what content they consume.
Each avatar has a personality chart, childhood history, favourite films and star sign.
By feeding this to an AI model, such as ChatGPT, the software can find patterns to predict how a person like Andy would respond.
‘We tend to ask, “What do you think of this? How would you say this?” Sometimes, she even constructs her own narrative and we polish it,’ says García.
‘There are people who don’t clock it, even when we disclose that it’s AI. “But it looks so real!”‘
The money these AI influencers make, however, is real.
Including brand deals and sponsored posts, López makes up to $50,000 a month. ‘She’ recently partnered with the ‘skincare brand’ Vellum, which is an app that enhances the texture of avatars.
Alex, who has 1,600 Instagram followers, makes $500 a month.
Despite talk of AI taking jobs, García doesn’t see Alex that way: ‘For every one influencer, we have 12 people working on them.
‘People forget that behind AI, humans are doing the work.’
‘There is a real woman behind this’
Mia Andrew is a blond-haired, blue-eyed ‘luxury lifestyle influencer’.
One seemingly AI-generated account of an ‘heiress’ said Mia is ‘90210 generational wealth’.
Behind Mia is Clarissa, a celebrity management and PR specialist, who says AI let her build a version of herself that exists beyond her real limits.
She stumbled on generative AI in 2022 while her son was in the hospital. He was stillborn – a fetus with no signs of life after 20 weeks – but doctors revived him.
‘In the hours when I wasn’t even allowed to touch him, because touch itself was too stimulating for his fragile nervous system, I had to think about the future,’ Clarissa, 34, says.
For the single mum, AI was that future.
‘The followers who do their research and discover the human behind Mia, my background, my son’s story, the reason she exists, often become the most loyal.
‘There is a real woman behind this. A woman who went through something devastating and chose to build instead of collapse.’
‘I gave him the muscular body I wished I had’
The response to these AI avatars has been largely positive, the creators all said. Even if some comments are from other bots asking for a re-post, or people using the anti-AI phrase ‘clanker’.
They all stressed that, yes, they could have hired a real influencer. But no one quite fit the ‘niche’ they wanted from a creative.
Take Arturo Bustillos, 32, who is the tech guru behind the ‘Mexican LGBTQ+ Reggaeton artist’ RoRo Castillos.
Bustillos, who lives in Ireland, based RoRo on himself to make his AI cutout more ‘authentic’.
‘The one big difference is his physique,’ Bustillos says. ‘I gave him the muscular body I always wished I had.
From RoRo’s social media accounts, including his Spotify profile, Bustillos earns ‘four figures’ a month from RoRo.
‘What drove me was feeling like there was a real gap in the space. Aitana and Miquela are groundbreaking,’ he says of the AI personality Lil Miquela.
‘But they don’t speak to the very specific cultural nuances, struggles and conversations that Latin queer people navigate.’
Harry Fitzgerald, COO at Fanvue, says that the AI Oscars will platform the talent of people like Bustillos
‘The technology has evolved so fast that re-imagining global events like the Oscars with AI Influencers can now be done with hyper-realistic accuracy,’ he adds.
But for Lucy Hart, the executive strategy director at the PR agency The Romans, there’s only so much a ‘synthfluencer’ can do.
Despite their popularity, craft creators and intellectual influencers are also booming. Think video essays with a mini mic or a how-to on making a bone-inlaid table.
‘An AI influencer cannot genuinely recommend a face cream that’s never touched human skin,’ Hart says, ‘or the taste of a new energy drink that’s never been consumed.’
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