New fakes: AI influencers

Do you know the feeling? You wake up and feel like you’re in a bad sci-fi novel?

It started over a decade ago when the manufacturer I photographed their products for decided to save the cost of the photographer and had the product images generated directly from the design data. I had already conducted interviews with car manufacturers who no longer transported their cars to the mountain pass at sunset, but only an HDR sphere. The car was inserted at home using CGI. This even worked for convertibles, because even the inside of the glove compartment and every single seam on the seats was depicted in the data. The only problem back then was the driver.

From this point on, my photographic interest in elaborate automobile advertising was suddenly extinguished. Taking pictures of cars? What’s the point? The Raytracer can do that better and cheaper.

Now it’s all about the influencers’ wallets. Fake grins? Plastic faces, fake CVs and rented Lambos? Much easier and cheaper with AI. Aitana Lopez, 220,000 followers, #fitnesslover is completely AI-generated and tagged shampoo and underwear. (On Dark Star, the catchline was “How do you wash your underpants in a spaceship?” Today the question would be: do AI influencers need tooth whitener?)

AI influencers are the new hot shit. They’re booked by Louis Vuitton, H&M and Kim Kardashian – yep. There are already influencers booking AI influencers. Why is that? Artificial fakes have a whole host of advantages over real fakes:

• They are cheaper, you can make them yourself if in doubt.
• They don’t have any strange political views
• They don’t have to go to the loo
• They don’t lose weight, don’t put on weight and are never caught wearing jogging bottoms at Walmart.
• They don’t get Covid or cold sores
• They didn’t work for the competition in a previous life
• They don’t get confused when reading out the claims and if marketing notices that the claims were rubbish, they read out the corrected claims ten times without making a face.
• The reach is up to ten times higher for the same cost.

Here’s another example. Lil Miquela, who has been going virtual since 2016 and even has her own Wikipedia entry. Her “family” charges several hundred thousand dollars per deal, she has 2.6 million followers and contracts with Prada and Givenchy. Prada is not the kind of company that targets pubescent girls and wants to sell them anti-pimple cream.

Accordingly, real fakes are now worried that the AI fakes are taking the butter off their bread and are calling for the AI fakes to be labeled as fakes. But that’s already happening. Lil is described as a “19-year-old robot living in LA”. Many Insta freaks think this is so cool that they call themselves a “robot” and now it’s back to business as usual: everything is fake.

As Rio Reiser already knew in 1988…. All lies