The social media influencer landscape is substantial, popular, and immensely lucrative. Social media influencers are users that have built a sizable social media network of followers and thereby have acquired the potential to exert their influence over their followers. Companies will pay for their product or service to be featured alongside influencers in the hopes of generating sales, profit, or likability for the brand.
Within the social media influencer landscape, computer-generated influencers (CGI) or artificial intelligence influencers (AI) influencers are becoming increasingly popular. Some virtual influencers you may have heard of include Bermuda, Blawko, Imma, Lil Miquela, and Shudu.
After the visual component of a virtual influencer is created using design software, Drenten and Brooks (2020) state that their online presence is then “governed by a team of professionals, content marketers, data analysts, music managers, animators, publicists, and more”. Virtual influencers are often created and controlled by private companies seeking profit from sponsorships and platform monetization. The following will discuss the ethical, social, and technological implications of virtual influencers.
Why Virtual Influencers are Important to Analyze
Social media applications, such as Instagram, are often populated with meaningful images that convey to users how they are supposed to look, act, or behave. Despite many users being cognizant that social media differs from reality there are still real urges to constantly be presenting one’s best self. The pressure for perfection has become more complicated with the popularization of beauty filters and photo editing applications like Facetune. Virtual influencers serve as the latest embodiment of machine behaviourism and post-digital living. Since their advent, virtual influencers have grown to be immensely popular attracting millions of followers and collaboration with numerous brands. California-based company Brud has developed some of the most popular virtual influencers such as Lil Miquela, Bermuda, and Blawko, and profit from their numerous brand collaborations. In 2018, Lil Miquela was named one of TIME magazine’s most influential people on the Internet and was described as a style icon promoting luxury brands such as Prada, Balenciaga, and Kenzo. Therefore, it is important to discuss the implications of virtual influencers as they often impact our purchasing decisions, beliefs, and tastes due to their acquired social power.
The Popularity of Virtual Influencers
As previously mentioned, virtual influencers are immensely popular. One reason to explain their demand is due to their novelty and newness. Spotting a virtual influencer in a campaign or advertisement is still a rare occurrence that commands one’s attention. Perhaps it is the uncanny valley effect, “whereby a near human-looking artifact can trigger feelings of eeriness and repulsion” (Moore, 2012). Virtual influencer’s close resemblance to human beings could trigger an emotional response that fascinates us. Virtual influencers are computer-generated images that often spark feelings of eeriness similar to watching a dystopian film. Despite some of these strange feelings, Thomas and Fowler (2021) in their study state that AI influencers are perceived positively by consumers and can provide meaningful brand benefits. This is likely because digital influencers are designed to be stylish, appealing, and pleasing to the eye. All these factors contribute to the popularity of virtual influencers online.
Impacts of Virtual Influencers
Due to their contrived appearances, virtual influencers could negatively impact user’s self-esteem. In their research, Richards and Caldwell (2015) declare a link between social media use and poorer psychological functioning, depression, and body dissatisfaction for adolescents. Virtual influencers could pose an even bigger threat to the mental health of users as they can easily conform to the Eurocentric beauty standard that permeates society. Virtual influencers are not bound to the same physical limitations as their human influencer counterparts. Hugo, the co-founder of The Goat Agency, states that virtual influencers provide ideal canvases for aspirational content as, “they can show anything off and make anything look perfect because that’s exactly how it needs to look” (Bradley, 2020). This quote from Hugo highlights how beauty standards have been commodified to convince people that purchasing products and services will transform them to appear conventionally attractive. This myth could be exacerbated as virtual influencers have perfect appearances that most humans could never even emulate. Virtual influencers not only contribute to harmful beauty standards that elevate whiteness and thinness but create new norms that exceed what is even possible for humans.
A major criticism of virtual influencer culture focuses on how the creators and companies of characters commodify Blackness. Henderson, Hakstian, and Williams (2016) argue that Blackness has a long history of being objectified and turned into a type of commodity and labour tool. Today, Blackness is synonymous with what is considered cool and exists adjacent to the social interests of the dominant society. Fiske (1995) states that cultural commodities of popular culture, such as films, television shows, and now the internet, are produced and distributed by an industrialized system whose aim is to maximize profit for the producers and distributors. Therefore, those commanding virtual influencers have no desire to accurately depict Blackness, but rather aid whichever representation of Blackness is most profitable.
A popular virtual influencer Shudu is presented as a dark skin Black woman and was created by British photographer Cameron-James Wilson. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Wilson stated he created Shudu after noticing the “big kind of movement with dark skin models,” and intended to honour their work by creating a virtual replica. Wilson has accumulated immense profit as Shudu has modelled for, “Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Ellesse, Samsung, Christian Louboutin, Ferragamo, and British GQ” (Sobande, 2021). The actions of Wilson serve as an example of how Blackness is being commodified within the virtual influencer industry to benefit non-Black people. In many ways, Black influencers are digital canvases that their creators can project messages about so-called racial diversity on while platforming their work without even having to pay real Black people.
Despite some of the contentions people have with virtual influencers, many companies still prefer virtual influencers to human influencers, due to the perception of the reduced likelihood for scandal. Unlike human people, virtual influencers are created and personalized to be subservient entities. The hope is that such control would make virtual influencers less likely to make public mistakes, blunders, or misjudgements that would lead to their “cancellation”. Clark (2020) declares “cancelling” as an expression of agency, a choice to withdraw one’s attention from someone or something whose values, (in)action or speech are so offensive, one no longer wishes to grace them with their presence, time, and money.
Cancel culture poses a huge threat to a company’s bottom line if an influencer is decidedly cancelled. However, many virtual influencers have faced public criticism for their actions or that of their creators. For instance, Raphael (2018) notes that Blawko has been disparaged for references to drugs and the use of disrespectful language. Petrarca (2019) states that in 2019, Lil Miquela was kissing model Bella Hadid in a Calvin Klein ad and was criticized for queerbaiting. These incidents serve as an example to showcase that virtual influencers can succumb to scandal just like their human influencer peers.
The Future of Virtual Influencers
The popularity of virtual influencer serves as a lesson that no branch of entertainment, performance, or art, including content creators, are safe from the threat of automation. Every time a digital influencer is hired for a campaign that could be taking money away from real human creators, and especially those in marginalized communities who disproportionately receive fewer opportunities. Virtual influencers will always have the advantages of entire teams crafting their image and technologists to learning and responding to the ever-changing algorithm. They can exceed the physical limitations of humans as they exist in infinite cyberspace.
All of the possible scenarios discussed, in which companies could employ virtual influencers, are important to consider as they increase in popularity. Current regulation on human social media for influencers is often vague, ambiguous, and inaccessible. In a statement to the New York Times, The Federal Trade Commission acknowledged “hasn’t yet specifically addressed the use of virtual influencers” but said companies using the characters for advertising should ensure that “any claims communicated about the product are truthful, not misleading and substantiated” (Hsu, 2019). The non-existent restrictions make conversations such as this important to counteract possible harmful messages users could be receiving as a result of virtual influencers. More scholarly research is necessary as virtual influencers continue to become more popular and exist adjacent to the dominant culture.
References
Bradley, S. (2020). Even better than the real thing? Meet the virtual influencers taking over your feeds. The Drum. https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/03/20/even-better-the-real-thing-meet-the-virtual-influencers-taking-over-your-feeds
Clark, M. (2020). DRAG THEM: A brief etymology of so-called “cancel culture”. Communication and the Public, 5(3–4), 88–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047320961562
Drenten, J., & Brooks, G. (2020). Celebrity 2.0: Lil Miquela and the rise of a virtual star system.
Feminist Media Studies, 20(8), 1319–1323. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1830927
Fiske, John. (1995). Critical Terms for Literary Study. Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press. (pp. 321–335).
Hsu, T. (2019). These influencers Aren’t flesh and blood, yet millions follow them. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/business/media/miquela-virtual-influencer.html
Thomas, V. L., & Fowler, K. (2021). Close encounters of the AI kind: Use of AI influencers as brand endorsers. Journal of Advertising, 50(1), 11–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2020.1810595
Time. (2018). The 25 Most Influential People on the Internet. Time Magazine. https://time.com/5324130/most-influential-internet/
Petrarca, E. (2019). Calvin Klein apologizes for Bella Hadid and Lil Miquela campaign. The Cut. https://www.thecut.com/2019/05/bella-hadid-lil-miquela-calvin-klein-apology.html
Raphael, S. (2018). Meet Bermuda, The most controversial CGI influencer on Instagram.
Refinery29. https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/bermuda-instagram-cgi-influencer
Richards D, Caldwell PHY, Go H. Impact of social media on the health of children and young people. J Paediatr Child Health. 2015;51(12):1152–1157. doi:10.1111/jpc.13023
Sobande, F. (2021). Spectacularized and branded digital (re)presentations of black people and blackness. Television & New Media, 22(2), 131–146. doi:10.1177/1527476420983745
Moore, R. K. (2012). A Bayesian explanation of the ‘uncanny valley’ effect and related psychological phenomena. Scientific Reports, 2(1), 864–864. doi:10.1038/srep00864
