It was just announced that local UAE brand, Brands For Less, will begin collaborating with AI influencers. This is the first regional brand to partner with AI Instagram personalities, but it is far from the first worldwide, and may be spelling out a pattern for what is yet to come.
What is being slated as an ‘exciting and creative new digital strategy’ for big brands and marketers, is really just a simplified way of saying that they’ve found a quicker, cheaper, and less resistant way of marketing a product. And yet, one can’t help but sympathise.
Late last year, it was revealed that a Spanish marketing company, The Clueless, had created an AI influencer (the pink haired beauty shown in the header image), one that quickly racked up over 350k Instagram followers. As her creators put it, “We did it so that we [could stop being] dependent on other people who have egos, who have manias, or who just want to make a lot of money by posing.” In other words, this AI influencer, who goes by Aitana Lopez, won’t complain about flying economy.
“They can speak any language we want, create content quickly, stay constant and be fully adaptable,” said Shahnaz Ahmed, director of creative and innovation at social media agency, The Social Element.
Influencers and pseudo celebrities are also prone to voice their personal opinions on everything from political to personal matters, one that might not necessarily align with a brand, so if someone creates their own influencer, they’ve immediately eliminated that problem. No drama. No Twitter backlash. No ‘boycotting brands’. Just an attractive mechanism performing the designated task: getting people to buy your stuff.
Additionally, big brands will thereby not be required to send out physical products – from handbags to supercars, these things can be extremely expensive – to influencers, and can simply digitally recreate those too.
The girl above, one of many upcoming AI influencers, has nearly 240k followers, and after scrolling through the comments, one can’t help but wonder: do people know she’s not real? Perhaps they do, and this is all just part of being ‘in on it’, especially since the features are noticeably digitalised. But opposed to the AI above, Aitana Lopez’s features are distinctly more convincing. So convincing that her creators reported that she’s received multiple DMs from famous athletes and other notable figures, people who clearly had no idea she was, in fact, not real.
In April of this year, Radix Media MENA launched the AI influencer pictured above, named Mayaseen.R. Although “she” currently only has 157 followers, she has officially partnered with Brands For Less, and one can only expect her to sign some lucrative marketing deals in the coming months, depending on the success of this initial campaign.
In the Middle East, it’s been reported that the influencer market is expected to reach AED 4.7 billion this year, with 75% of residents in the UAE stating that they actively follow and pay attention to social media influencers. In Dubai specifically, these wizards of the web have a massive impact on the products people buy. But, as noted, hiring influencers comes with the added cost of dealing with potentially diva-like personalities, an issue that will be eliminated the second brands switch from humans to AI.
At the moment, technology has not yet reached the sophistication to entirely remove the ‘uncanny valley’ effect (a term describing the eerie sensation one feels when encountering a robot or computer generated character with human-like characteristics, yet noticeably not human), but such advancements are only a matter of time.
For now, if you’re an aspiring influencer, one could only implore you to accept the economy seat to fashion week. Who knows if the offer will still stand in a few months.
