4 Effective Examples of Generative AI in Influencer Marketing

The generative AI boom is already transforming influencer marketing as we know it, delivering a level of personalization and human touch that’s outpacing even today's most creative social media users. 

Marketers are already piling resources into generative AI en masse, and Billion Dollar Boy has found that 92% of marketers have commissioned creator content either fully or partly using GenAI technology. 

Despite the implications of AI for influencers and their roles, many creators are also adapting to the age of intelligence. According to the same study, as much as 91% of influencers say they’re using generative AI at least once a week. 

What’s more, is that consumers are receptive to the emergence of generative AI content. With the ability to render rich visualizations tailored to the individual wants and needs of specific segments and customer profiles, 60% of consumers claim to prefer GenAI content over traditional creator content. 

To support this, 81% of creators saw better consumer engagement in their generative AI content compared to more manually created copy and multimedia. 

The revolutionary impact of GenAI is already sweeping through the influencer marketing landscape. Here, we will look at the mechanics of the intelligence boom on the landscape, and explore four key examples of generative AI in action: 

The Science Behind AI Influencers

Generative AI is fast becoming commonplace for businesses. Hostinger data shows that 51% of businesses, a majority, are using GenAI tools to improve operations by creating content, analyzing data, and generating text, images, and other forms of multimedia. 

The effectiveness of AI influencers is that generative AI tools can ensure stronger end-to-end campaign messaging that’s wholly consistent with brand voice and aesthetics. 

Although these artificial intelligence structures will rely on generative AI for their output, machine learning (ML) will be a core component in analyzing consumer behavior and preferences to deliver personalized and engaging content designed to resonate with their target audiences. 

In practice, this will remove the unpredictability of traditional human influencer marketing, leaving a brand presence that can be continually fine-tuned in an autonomous manner to deliver the most impactful results. 

The impact of generative AI in influencer marketing is already building momentum. 70% of marketers saw increased marketing spending on creator content with generative AI over the past year, according to Mike Nellis, founder of AI content platform Quiller.ai. 

The findings stemmed from a survey of 4,000 consumers, 1,000 content creators, and 1,000 senior marketing decision-makers in the US and UK. 

Can Generative AI Improve Your Next Influencer Marketing Campaign? 

Generative AI can not only improve the effectiveness of your messaging when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns but also provide several benefits that you can enjoy when utilizing the power of GenAI to enhance your voice on social media. These include: 

Tailoring Messages for Diverse Followers

Crucially, generative AI influencer campaigns can deliver personalized content for varied audience segments and diverse audiences. 

With the help of ML, generative AI influencers can actively analyze unstructured data across varied sources to tailor content that resonates with an audience that matches their follower base while maintaining an emphasis on brand voice and personality. 

Today, brands like Netflix and Amazon already use AI at scale to deliver personalized recommendations based on user habits, and influencer campaigns can look to similar strategies to fine-tune content for the best possible impact. 

Real-Time Engagement and Sentiment Analysis

Brands can also enjoy unprecedented sentiment analysis by utilizing natural language processing (NLP) to study each individual response to the campaign in the form of comments and brand mentions while a campaign is active. 

What’s more, is that GenAI influencers can actively engage with these mentions and comments to follow up on negative sentiment and automatically generate personalized responses to provide better brand loyalty. 

Virtual Avatars

There’s no better way to resonate with customers than to build an avatar that appeals to them on a human level. For brands using generative AI influencer campaigns, the brilliance of virtual avatars is that ML can allow the technology to learn and personalize itself according to customer 

needs. 

This means that when different audience segments engage with an avatar, it can create a more personable experience that matches the user's expectations every time. 

Strengthening Brand-Influencer Collaborations

Generative AI can also strengthen human influencer campaigns by empowering more brands to analyze influencer content, audience demographics, and engagement data at scale to pinpoint the most relevant influencers for a successful campaign. 

Machine learning tools can also assess the niche industry of each influencer to better understand how they align with your brand’s vision, customer profile, and personality to fully assess compatibility. 

4 Generative AI Influencers Transforming Brand Marketing

The age of the generative AI influencer is already upon us, and while use cases are emerging and evolving at a rapid pace, we will explore four of the industry’s most notable examples of GenAI influencers to understand the transformative impact they can provide brands:

Lil Miquela

Miquela Sousa, or Lil Miquela, is a virtual robot model who has worked with some of the world’s top fashion brands such as Prada, Dior, and Calvin Klein.

She has 2.5 million Instagram followers, referred to as “Miquelites”, 3.5 million TikTok followers, and more than 29,500 Twitter followers. 

Astoundingly, Miquela was listed as one of TIME’s 25 most influential people on the internet in 2018 and kissed Bella Hadid in a Calvin Klein at around the same time. 

Lil Miquela, whose avatar is a half-Spanish, half-Brazilian 19-year-old living in Los Angeles, was created by Brud, a transmedia studio that creates AI characters for unique storytelling. 

Crucially, Brud uses generative AI and ML to provide Miquela with context and to help her avatar evolve. Using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and other intelligent models to generate realistic data for visual content and social interactions, Lil Miquela quickly evolved to become a style icon for her millions of followers. 

The AI models built a narrative around the influencer, engaging directly with its audience through real-world dialogues and controversies. Miquela even interviewed musicians at Coachella and appeared on the Zach Sang Show. 

As an example of Lil Miquela’s unique influence on brands on social media, Prada reached out to stage a unique Milan Fashion Week Instagram takeover in 2018. 

During Milan Fashion Week, Lil Miquela provided followers with a tour of the show space ‘through her eyes’ by flying a drone that the influencer explained was controlled with her iPhone. 

The brilliance of Lil Miquela is that she stood as an early example of the potential of generative 

AI storytelling and learning from audience interactions. 

Brands providing behind-the-scenes tours of special events is nothing new in marketing, but when orchestrated by a generative AI model that is programmed to provide engaging storytelling to an engaged audience, it can carry a major impact. 

Noonoouri

Created by Joerg Zuber, the founder of Opium Effect, a creative agency in Munich, this “19-year-old” digital character has taken the fashion industry by storm.

Working with brands like Marc Jacobs, Lacoste, Versace, and Bulgari, she aims to inform her audiences about various causes from paganism to sustainable fashion. She has already gained almost 500,000 followers on Instagram.

Noonoouri is an example of a principled AI influencer that claims to be vegan and refuses to wear fur while working alongside some of the fashion industry’s biggest names. 

Adopting a more cartoonish avatar, Noonoouri was identified by Dior as an ideal influencer to reach a new user base on social media. 

In 2018, we saw Dior stage an almost complete reenactment of its Ultra Rouge lipstick advert starring Natalie Portman but instead featuring Noonoouri as the model of choice. 

For Dior, the immediate appeal of this strategy was that an existing scene could be instantly made more relevant to new audience segments with the help of a generative AI overlay. 

In another indication as to what the future of GenAI influencers could look like, Noonoouri was handed a record contract by Warner Music in 2023 and has since released both albums and music videos. 

The process of creating Noonoouri’s singing voice was to use human recordings and modulate them into a voice that’s supposed to be unique to the AI avatar. The strategy opens the door to new ways for brands to reach and resonate with their leads through different engagement techniques. 

Janky

Janky was developed by Superplastic, the world’s leading creator of animated synthetic celebrities, apparel, and designer toys. 

This cartoon stuntman first made its first appearance in June 2019. His brand mentions include names like Tinder, Prada, and Red Bull. He has already gained more than 1 million followers on Instagram.

Unlike Lil Miquela and Noonoouri, Janky is an anthropomorphic character who claims to be a stuntman. 

Taking on an edgy and sweary demeanor, Janky offers an avatar that can be controlled by brands without the unpredictability of human influencers that could lead to PR issues and weaker consumer sentiment as a result. 

In recent years, Janky collaborated with the metaverse game Fortnite, and although the partnership received an initially lukewarm response among gamers, the character’s in-game content has become much sought-after for its scarcity. 

Imma Gram

Imma has the title of being Japan’s first virtual model. The Japan Economics Entertainment even selected her as a ‘New 100 Talent to Watch’. She has already gained more than 391,000 followers on Instagram.

Her brand mentions included the likes of Coach, Burberry, TikTok, Adidas Tokyo, and IKEA Japan.

Powered by CGI technology, Imma is extremely difficult to differentiate from human influencers, and here life-like appearance has made product placement and collaborations far more effective for brands without relying on sending products to models or transporting them to events. 

IKEA Japan was quick to capitalize on the emergence of Imma on social media and created an immersive collaboration where the model spent three days interactive with a new home decked out in the brand’s furniture. 

The showpiece took place over two floors in the IKEA Harajuku window with the use of LED screens, and both visitors and followers alike were able to gain an immersive experience in viewing Imma’s home life in real time. 

Not only did the collaboration showcase how brands can unite the physical and digital worlds with the help of generative AI influencers, but the campaign drew international attention with more than 80 media stories posted globally. 

Striking A Balance: The Importance Of The Human Touch

At this stage, it’s important to note that the rise of generative AI influencers has brought fresh challenges for brands alongside unprecedented opportunities. 

The astonishing rise of Lil Miquela and other humanoid AI influencers has helped to drive positive user sentiment, but some audiences have shared their disappointment that brands have sought to use GenAI fashion models with unrealistic beauty standards over other human influencers.

There’s also a pertinent danger of AI hallucinations, which could run the risk of your brand becoming associated with misinformation or damaging statements made by AI influencers. 

According to Mesut Cicek, assistant professor of marketing and international business at Washington State University, the use of AI can decrease emotional trust in individuals. This finding is particularly worrying at a time when value-driven branding is a vital component of marketing efforts among many businesses. 

To mitigate this adverse impact, it’s essential that you unite your generative AI influencer campaigns with far greater personalization and value-driven engagement. 

AI influencers should support your brand’s personality by engaging with followers using a consistent voice in the comments section of networks and by maintaining a personable demeanor throughout the campaign. 

It’s also worth running a more human-focused campaign alongside your generative AI influencer campaign. Here, curating user-generated content (UGC) on your brand’s social media account can go a long way in maintaining an emphasis on human communication to help all audience segments to engage with your brand. 

Final Thoughts

The age of generative AI influencers is already here, and brands can make significant headway in resonating with more diverse audience segments by uniting with avatars that support shared goals and are capable of matching the expectations of consumers. 

While the age of AI in marketing will open the door to new possibilities within marketing campaigns, consumers will also largely demand a more human touch to help sustain engagement. This calls for a more personalized strategy that also sees your brand communicate directly with leads while curating UGC. 

If you’re a marketer seeking to take your first steps in the world of generative AI influencer campaigns, it could be worth starting small and building an avatar to match a large customer segment before using real-world feedback to refine your approach to reach more diversified audiences. 

The future is now, and for the world of marketing, the age of the influencer will never be the same again.