The regular reputation of influencer advertising and marketing, coupled with fast developments in AI, fueled the expansion of latest social media personas: digital influencers. These computer-generated personalities perform quite a bit like actual human influencers. They publish selfies and content material from their day-to-day lives alongside model partnerships with main corporations. However they don’t exist within the bodily world.
Extra digital influencers have flooded the scene since they first appeared on social, however are digital influencers nonetheless a pattern with endurance or extra of a novelty for manufacturers seeking to minimize by means of the noise of an more and more crowded social media panorama? On this article, we’ll outline digital influencers and the way they work, the most important issues manufacturers ought to have earlier than working with one and a few of the most outstanding digital influencers on the scene immediately.
What are digital influencers?
Digital influencers are digital personalities that exist totally on social media. They’re not actual folks however computer-generated characters created with superior CGI, movement seize and AI expertise.
There are various kinds of digital influencers, starting from non-human characters to extremely reasonable human-like personas. They’re usually developed and managed by artistic businesses specializing in AI, robotics or advertising and marketing. Nevertheless, some manufacturers have even created their very own digital influencers, like Brazilian retailer Magalu’s Lu. These brand-specific characters perform extra like spokesmodels or mascots, as they hardly ever have a platform or following outdoors of the model.
How do digital influencers work?
Digital influencers function very like common social media influencers. These on-line avatars work together with social media customers like human influencers, sharing content material, endorsing merchandise and fascinating with followers. They provide a singular and progressive manner for manufacturers to attach with their viewers. However there’s a core distinction: The interactions they’ve with real-life services or products and the engagement with followers are utterly fabricated.
A digital influencer advertising and marketing instance could be LiquidIV’s partnership with famend AI influencer Lil Miquela. Miquela shared a reel highlighting her latest adventures, with particular concentrate on how she incorporates LiquidIV into her routine. Like a typical influencer-brand partnership, Lil Miquela even disclosed the advert with hashtags like #LiquidIVPartner within the caption.
The advantages of digital influencers
Influencer advertising and marketing and AI are two developments shortly taking up the advertising and marketing business. In a Q3 2025 Sprout Social Pulse Survey about half of Millennials (48%) and greater than half of Gen Z (53%) say they’ve purchased a services or products by means of an influencer’s sponsored publish within the final yr. And, The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ discovered that 93% of social practitioners consider AI is a software that may assist artistic fatigue. So what occurs if you mix the 2? Listed below are just a few of probably the most important advantages of partnering with digital influencers.
Management over content material
Manufacturers who need to get throughout a sure message or have a particular level to make with an influencer partnership have a distinct degree of management over content material with digital influencers. Having extra management over what an influencer posts may be interesting to some manufacturers with a really particular message to share.
Adaptability
Digital influencers by no means age, can converse any language and might ‘journey’ to anyplace. This degree of adaptability and adaptability means manufacturers can probably use one digital influencer for campaigns in numerous areas as an alternative of discovering totally different influencers for numerous markets.
Consistency
Not like human influencers whose manufacturers would possibly evolve as they age or enter totally different life phases, digital influencers have a constant look, persona and content material. This stability means manufacturers don’t have to fret about surprising shifts and might depend on a digital influencer to advertise their provide in a predictable manner.
What function will digital influencers play within the creator economic system?
The creator economic system is consistently evolving, and digital influencers are carving out an enchanting, but advanced, area of interest inside it. Presently, shopper sentiment towards manufacturers utilizing AI influencers is blended, with rising skepticism.
Whereas Sprout’s 2024 Influencer Advertising Report confirmed that 37% of customers is perhaps extra fascinated about a model that makes use of an AI influencer, one other 37% stated they’d mistrust the model. And, Sprout’s Q3 2025 Pulse Survey knowledge highlights rising issues with AI influencers. Practically half of customers (46%) are uncomfortable with manufacturers utilizing AI influencers—with solely 23% saying they’re snug.
With shopper sentiment on digital influencers break up, it’s as much as manufacturers to find out if these influencers have endurance. Digital influencers can current a brand new frontier for artistic expression within the creator economic system, however their function will rely upon how manufacturers associate with them. Manufacturers who need to discover digital partnerships have to dispel shopper skepticism, prioritize transparency and concentrate on delivering distinctive, helpful content material.
How digital influencers can impression manufacturers: Understanding the dangers
Whereas the digital influencer market is rising—anticipated to achieve practically $45 billion USD by 2030 based on Grandview Analysis—manufacturers and businesses are cautiously pursuing digital influencer partnerships as a result of they pose some dangers.
Listed below are some key factors manufacturers want to consider as digital influencers turn out to be extra standard.
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Model security and repute
Digital influencers might look like a safer wager than real-life influencers, however they’re not utterly resistant to controversy. For instance, influencer Caryn Marjorie made headlines for creating an AI model of herself that some folks criticized for being demeaning to ladies and enabling anti-social habits.
Moreover, AI has a black field drawback. People don’t totally perceive how these methods work or make selections, which poses an enormous problem for advertisers and businesses. With out that readability, it’s laborious for manufacturers to belief these digital influencers utterly. So, whereas AI has a cool issue, entrepreneurs have to be cautious about diving in headfirst to keep away from future PR disasters.
Transparency and authenticity
portion of customers already wrestle to inform the distinction between genuine and AI-generated content material. A Sprout report on the Way forward for AI in Advertising discovered that greater than a 3rd of customers (36%) say they wouldn’t be capable of distinguish between AI and human-generated content material. As expertise advances and digital influencers resemble people much more, it’s crucial for manufacturers to be clear about how they use these instruments.
The FTC stated digital influencers ought to disclose model sponsorships identical to human influencers, and the advert company Ogilvy is pushing for clearer guidelines about AI-generated content material. Nonetheless, digital influencer laws and pointers are a piece in progress.
Moreover, most manufacturers work with influencers to faucet into their genuine relationships with their viewers. Whereas there are nonetheless actual folks behind a digital influencer, they will’t straight join with their followers in the identical manner. Additionally they can’t work together with merchandise or give trustworthy evaluations like human influencers can, which might make their endorsements really feel much less real.
Viewers sentiment
Digital influencers can impression how folks really feel about manufacturers—for higher or worse. Whereas AI instruments have just lately exploded in reputation and have dozens of advantages for entrepreneurs, the extra human-like purposes of the expertise can typically produce an “uncanny valley” impact the place folks discover them off-putting.
Among the hottest digital influencers even have racially ambiguous options, which advertising and marketing consultants interpret as a manner for manufacturers to enchantment to a broader viewers. Nevertheless, this strategy may additionally work towards a model, as it may be seen as a shortcut to showing extra inclusive than they really are—a problem many magnificence and style manufacturers have been criticized for.
Mental property misuse
Since digital influencers are created utilizing AI, their social presence depends on underlying digital belongings, algorithms and knowledge. With out understanding the agreements in place to supply these belongings, manufacturers may inadvertently expose themselves to authorized challenges or copyright infringement (i.e. have been the AI fashions skilled on copyrighted materials with out licensing?).
Actual life examples of this have been surfacing throughout social networks, with AI creators stealing and reusing the content material of human creators verbatim, with out credit score or acknowledgement.
Copycat content material
In a crowded social media panorama, audiences crave originality. Along with the authorized dangers that include mental property misuse, partnering with the improper digital influencers has potential to dilute your model voice with generic content material pieced collectively from throughout the online. Shoppers are uninterested in manufacturers merely leaping on each pattern and as an alternative need to see manufacturers that prioritize originality, relatability and real viewers engagement, based on The Index.
A digital influencer, if not managed with a strategic, human-centric strategy, may fall into the entice of manufacturing content material that feels inauthentic, undermining a model’s id. To keep away from this, manufacturers want to ensure digital influencer partnerships showcase content material and tales that can resonate with their viewers relatively than observe a fleeting pattern.
The highest digital influencers making waves on social media
The pattern could also be gaining momentum now, however digital influencers have truly been round for fairly a while, quietly revolutionizing the world of influencer advertising and marketing and constructing huge social media followings. From style icons to animated characters, listed here are the highest digital influencers to observe.
Lil Miquela
In response to her Instagram bio, Miquela (@lilmiquela on Instagram) is a “19-year-old robotic residing in LA.” A pioneer within the digital influencer house with 2.4 million Instagram followers and three.4 million TikTok followers, she was launched in 2016 and is now managed by artistic company Brud. She’s partnered with manufacturers like Prada, Pacsun and Calvin Klein and even earned a spot on TIME journal’s record of the ‘25 most influential folks on the web.’
Imma
Imma (@imma.gram on Instagram) is a digital woman in Tokyo with over 388k Instagram followers. The brainchild of Aww Inc., she’s recognized for her iconic bubblegum pink bob and killer sense of fashion. She can also be curious and infrequently questions her id, utilizing the hashtag #ithinkimcgi. Lately, Coach launched a marketing campaign that includes Imma alongside celebs like Lil Nas X and Camila Mendes, the place she visits every ambassador of their digital worlds.
Janky
Janky (@Janky on Instagram) is a mischievous cat-like character with practically 1 million Instagram followers and 11.5 million followers on a shared TikTok account with fellow digital influencer Guggimon. They have been created by Superplastic, an organization recognized for its animated artificial celebrities and designer toys. As a digital influencer, Janky has collaborated with manufacturers like 7-Eleven, Fortnite and Gucci.
What’s subsequent for digital influencer advertising and marketing
Digital influencers carry a recent and attention-grabbing twist to advertising and marketing campaigns. However there’s nonetheless quite a bit we don’t find out about this expertise.
Our recommendation? Vet a digital influencer identical to you’ll every other influencer, and weigh the dangers and advantages to your model. Strain take a look at the concept towards your viewers’s expectations and your model’s core values. Would your viewers discover worth or leisure in a digital influencer partnership, or do they like actual creator collaborations? Make certain the influencer is finally the correct match to your model.
In case you do select to maneuver ahead with a marketing campaign, transparency is vital. Use hashtags like #PoweredByAI to let folks comprehend it’s a digital influencer marketing campaign, and intently monitor any interactions between the influencer and your viewers.
Prepared to begin planning your subsequent digital influencer advertising and marketing marketing campaign? Try our influencer advertising and marketing finances template to optimize your spending and make sure you allocate your advertising and marketing {dollars} to the correct partnerships.
FAQs
What’s digital influencer advertising and marketing?
Digital influencer advertising and marketing entails manufacturers partnering with digitally fabricated personalities who primarily exist on social media. These digital avatars perform very like human influencers, sharing content material, endorsing merchandise and fascinating with followers.
Who’s the largest digital influencer?
Lu do Magalu, created by Brazilian model Magalu, is called the highest digital influencer when it comes to followers throughout social networks. She’s been employed and created content material for a few of the world’s largest manufacturers, and has even been on the duvet of Vogue.
Are AI influencers authorized?
Sure, AI influencers are authorized, however laws and pointers round them are nonetheless underneath growth.
