The complex world of virtual influencers

Virtual influencers, models, and KOLs are a growing trend and while they present opportunities there are also significant issues that marketers need to think about when engaging.

Why it matters

Virtual influencers aren’t particularly new, with brands ranging form Samsung, to Balmain, to LG, to Magnum deploying these technologies, some as far back as 2018. But with the emergence of AI, the use cases and the questions surrounding the tech become tougher.

The good

The benefits for brands include hyper-flexibility to campaign needs, video-game tie-ins, and inherent cross-channel applications.

As Jing Daily argues, there are opportunities in the metaverse-like virtual worlds (still), as well as a broader opportunity for gamification designed to speak to gaming-friendly Gen-Z.

Arguably, the strongest opportunity lies in the branded possibilities of virtual characters – such as those made famous by their video game manifestations. Meanwhile, the stronger argument is that they can be a lot cheaper than real influencers.

The bad

Sixth Tone takes a very different angle on the story, noting the increasingly sexist and objectifying creations of AI-generated virtual models as they grow both on social media and as instruments for brand promotions – in short, the male gaze appears to be baked into many of these models.

The report finds that many such AI-generated images look to an ultra-sexualised, unrealistic and toxic idea of women, through a kind of doll-like quality. For marketers, aside from the considerable ethical problems, there is also the issue that female models typically advertise clothes bought by women.

As Xu Ke, a graduate student at the China Academy of Art, quoted by Sixth Tone, wrote: “Can creators be aware that images of female models should serve females?”

Sourced from Jing Daily, Sixth Tone, WARC