Communications of the ACM
AI-Created 'Virtual Influencers' Are Stealing Business From Humans
"We unintentionally created a monster. A beautiful one, though," said the co-founder of the agency behind the AI-generated model.
Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. 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 human influencers worried about digital threats to their income. That concern is also shared by people in more established professions about threats to their livelihoods from generative AI.
"What freaks me out about these influencers is how hard it is to tell they're fake," says Danae Mercer, a content creator with more than two million followers.
From Ars Technica
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