Lil Miquela has 2.3 million Instagram followers, brand deals with Calvin Klein and Samsung, and a carefully curated aesthetic that would make any influencer envious. There’s just one catch: She doesn’t exist.
AI influencers are having a moment. They’re signing brand deals, starring in fashion campaigns, promoting the next big tech releases, and appearing in social feeds alongside real creators. Still, even the most compelling AI avatar struggles to build sustainable influence rooted in trust—a quality many consumers will continue to seek from human creators.
AI influencers are digitally constructed personas created using generative AI. Their images, likenesses, videos, captions, and interactions are produced through a combination of machine-learning models, creative direction, and human oversight. Their “personalities” are designed, and their engagement is the result of scripted or semi-automated responses rather than spontaneous interaction.
The first major AI influencer, Lil Miquela, launched in 2016. Today, Lil Miquela has amassed over 2.3 million followers on Instagram and has been a part of campaigns such as Calvin Klein’s #mycalvins and Samsung’s #TeamGalaxy.
AI influencers have grown rapidly in visibility over the past few years, with an estimated market size of $6.06 billion in 2024, according to Grand View Research. Nearly half of college-aged Gen Z consumers follow at least one AI influencer, according to Whop.
From a brand perspective, AI influencers solve a lot of problems. They offer total control to campaign leaders. The risk of blowback on a brand collaboration with an AI influencer is mitigated by the fact that they have no reputational surprises, controversial histories, conflicting opinions, or messy personal lives bleeding into their campaigns.
Additionally, one avatar can “appear” in dozens of markets overnight, perfectly on-brand and endlessly customizable. In an industry built on performance metrics, AI feels like progress toward influencers with fewer risk variables, seamless activation, and more predictable outcomes.
1. Untrustworthiness
At a macro level, marketers must focus on one of the most critical elements of branding: trust. It’s here that AI influencers pose many risks. While AI influencers are meant to program seamlessly into a feed of humanmade content, certain qualities emerge in AI generations that cause a reaction known as the uncanny valley effect.
The uncanny valley effect is a psychological phenomenon where something that looks almost human, but not quite, triggers feelings of discomfort, eeriness, or distrust in a viewer—and distrust for any influencer, AI or human, is the worst outcome. This is where AI influencers (for now) are falling short: creating trust and building a real connection with human consumers. According to Sprout Social, nearly 46% of consumers say they are uncomfortable with brands using AI influencers, and only 31% say their acceptance depends on the campaign.
AI can simulate tone and likeness, but it can’t simulate the human characteristics that are shaped over years of human experiences from childhood to culture. Those absences show up in the work, even when the content is technically impressive or visually similar to human characteristics.
2. Disclosure concerns
Brands may be tempted to represent an AI avatar as a real person without proper labeling—but remember, audiences don’t like being misled (not to mention that the FTC might have something to say about it!). You can see the shift instantly when followers realize they’ve been engaging with something synthetic. Curiosity turns into skepticism and novelty turns into resentment.
According to an IAB report, over half of consumers want advertisers to disclose the use of generative AI—and that’s just for advertisements generally. If an influencer that users follow and interact with is found to be AI-generated, it’s likely their sense of distrust will only grow.
Platforms are increasing disclosure requirements around paid partnerships and compensation. For instance, TikTok now labels AI-generated content to reduce the risk of misleading audiences.
3. Oversaturation
There’s another issue that gets far less attention in conversations about AI influencers: sameness. Despite the theoretical flexibility of AI, many digital avatars converge on the same narrow aesthetic. They are conventionally attractive, overly polished, and culturally neutral in the name of broad appeal. Beyond the ethical risk of reinforcing existing biases and sidelining voices that already struggle for visibility, brands that rely on these avatars also expose themselves to backlash over a lack of meaningful representation.
1. Imperfection and nuance
The most effective influencer content is rarely the most optimized. Creators who focus less on the technical components of content creation and more on being themselves tend to be the most successful, with better audience sentiment, according to HypeAuditor.
For instance, Kent Burris of @dinewithkent has amassed a loyal following of hundreds of thousands of people on both Instagram and TikTok. His editing style is minimal and lacks the hyper-quick cutting style many short videos abide by today. Burris’ content is well-paced and allows his genuine personality, perspective, and the food he is reviewing take center stage.
Woody Shin of @wookeunshin is another example of imperfect content gaining tremendous popularity. His focus on personal storytelling, slower edits, and slice-of-life content pulls from his lifestyle in Korea, his family, his culture, and even his perspective as a growing influencer.
This is because nuance is a key human marketing advantage, according to Baotran Tran, an experienced UGC creator with coaching expertise in paid media and social creative strategy. “We instinctively know when a trend feels played out, when a joke will land, or when a message needs to be humanized,” she explains. “Those micro-decisions are often what make content feel native and natural, and aren’t something I foresee AI being able to ever fully replace.”
2. Authenticity
Even as brands experiment with AI avatars, the consumer desire for real content from real people hasn’t shifted. According to Statista, 67% of fashion and beauty buyers in the U.K. say authenticity matters in influencer roles, and 60% say relatability is important.
While AI excels at scheduling posts, analyzing performance, assisting with ideation, and carrying the operational weight that often burns creators out, influence itself can’t be automated. Trust, storytelling, and cultural relevance are human skills. In the end, AI may optimize the work, but people remain the reason it works.
