I'm left to wonder how effective an AI influencer is the moment people realize they're fake. Even if you know a person is being paid for a promotion, you still know it's a person delivering the...
I'm left to wonder how effective an AI influencer is the moment people realize they're fake. Even if you know a person is being paid for a promotion, you still know it's a person delivering the message. I feel like there's a level of trust between influencers and their audience (regardless of how well placed that trust is). If I was watching a video or reading a post and I realized the whole thing was AI generated, I'd immediately disbelieve everything I'd heard because I don't trust AI to be factual, especially if I'm looking for opinions and first hand experiences. I imagine that's a lot of the value a travel influencer provides for their followers and I have to wonder if that same people who pay attention to influencers (a demographic I don't really fall into) will actually pay attention to these AI accounts.
Part of me feels like an idea like this is dead on arrival, but I've been surprised so often at how people choose to engage with AI so far (like people who "date" chat bots) that I won't be surprised either way. Strange times.
I don't really understand the purpose of travel influencers honestly. I was shocked to see the statistics that "73 percent of consumers say an influencer’s recommendation has helped them choose a...
I don't really understand the purpose of travel influencers honestly. I was shocked to see the statistics that "73 percent of consumers say an influencer’s recommendation has helped them choose a destination, a hotel or another element of a trip."
They're paid spokespeople that people choose to voluntarily engage with for some reason.
Like yeah, an AI influencer won't be real, or factual but... neither will a human influencer. Both of them are being fed the exact content that the brand wants them to promote.
I wonder if "travel influencer" in that statistic is including a broader definition than what we're thinking. For example, I sometimes use TripAdvisor and even leave reviews myself, particularly...
I wonder if "travel influencer" in that statistic is including a broader definition than what we're thinking.
For example, I sometimes use TripAdvisor and even leave reviews myself, particularly with hotels. My Instagram, up until this year where I kinda stopped posting, has almost entirely been photos from my travels. Am I a travel influencer? Maybe, by one definition. Is anyone paying me? No...🙁
I watch some YouTubers based out in Japan who occasionally do travel vlogs in Japan. The channels aren't entirely devoted to travel in Japan; they talk about other Japan-related topics. But if I was looking for things to do in Japan, would I look at their recommendations? Absolutely. I've already some of the places they've been to my hypothetical Japan trip itinerary (though I might going next year finally!).
Then I also think about people like Steve Ricks, Samantha Brown, and the late Anthony Bourdain. They may not be influencers in the way we think about influencers, but they've definitely had an influence on millions of people's travel plans over the years.
So I could see how 73% of consumers are looking to "travel influencers."
There's a pretty important distinction between Anthony Bourdain, Steve Ricks, people who vlog about their personal travel, and even your personal Instagram feed versus a "professional influencer"....
Exemplary
There's a pretty important distinction between Anthony Bourdain, Steve Ricks, people who vlog about their personal travel, and even your personal Instagram feed versus a "professional influencer".
Namely, the former is doing what they do either because they enjoy it, and they're not getting compensated for it, or they're getting compensated for it by some independent party that just wants to produce interesting content.
Travel influencers aren't doing that. They're getting paid by the hotels they say to visit. They're getting paid by the airlines they say to travel with. They're getting paid by the bathing suit company they say to buy the products of.
It's the difference between making a decision of where to visit because you saw a travel review saying it's a good value versus deciding to go there because you saw an ad on tv.
Professional travel influencers aren't reviewers. They're marketers. The only thing that their endorsement means is that whatever brand they're endorsing had the money to pay them.
I don't know if that statistic makes that distinction, but to me, it's the most important one there is when determining whether or not someone is an "influencer".
I am appalled by what I see on Instagram these days (not personally, I don't have an account -- but sometimes I ask friends if I can take a look at their feed). Literally every influencer, at even...
I am appalled by what I see on Instagram these days (not personally, I don't have an account -- but sometimes I ask friends if I can take a look at their feed). Literally every influencer, at even the slightest hint of popularity, starts hawking random drop-shipped crap. They don't even attempt to hide the fact that they're sponsored, or that they don't use any of this crap. They just create tons of content about it in the hopes that some of their loyal followers buy it simply through association.
It's wild to me because in the techy communities that I participate in, sponcon has been considered cancer for many years. To a point where even the popular "influencer" types often and assertively remind users than sponsors are not given editorial privileges, or that they aren't sponsored at all, just trying something that they were interested in with their own money.
I just can't understand the mindset of someone who buys, say, a showerhead simply because they recognize the personality who is pushing it from other social media posts. I always take a critical eye to sponsored or recommendation posts from people I follow. I've unfollowed RSS feeds and Mastodon accounts simply because I didn't trust the opinions of the people running those accounts. This reminds me of celebrity tie-ins, but on a broad scale -- think Snoop Dogg wine, or celebrities in TV ads, or when Artie gets bamboozled by Armagnac in The Sopranos. Basically ponzi schemes where the entire schtick is selling crap down the line until the biggest, poorest fool gets screwed.
The mentality of the general public in the past few decades seems to have shifted from viewing taking a principled stand on things being a virtue, to getting the bag by any means necessary being a...
The mentality of the general public in the past few decades seems to have shifted from viewing taking a principled stand on things being a virtue, to getting the bag by any means necessary being a virtue.
People would accuse bands, celebrities, politicians and so forth of being sellouts for blatantly hawking brands in the past. It's hard to imagine that kind of criticism towards any sort of mainstream public figure nowadays.
The side hustle of selling your popularity for money seems to be something that's normalized, accepted, and even encouraged by most people nowadays.
I don't know what that says about the world we currently live in, but it's pretty disturbing to me.
Something I will never understand is a public figure who already has so much wealth they could never spend it cheapening their image by hawking scams/garbage for even more money. Why would anyone...
Something I will never understand is a public figure who already has so much wealth they could never spend it cheapening their image by hawking scams/garbage for even more money. Why would anyone do this?
Look at this years Coca Cola Christmas ad. It is one of the biggest most well known brand in the world with billions in profits. They certainly have the resources to produce a top quality good...
Look at this years Coca Cola Christmas ad. It is one of the biggest most well known brand in the world with billions in profits. They certainly have the resources to produce a top quality good looking Christmas ad. Yet they have chosen to use AI this time. If they are okay with AI slop, then there is no higher commercial standard to live up to.
I don't think that's really the case? Maybe for like a hotel, but in my experience most "travel influencers" are more about particular destinations and their experiences there. The mountain...
I don't think that's really the case? Maybe for like a hotel, but in my experience most "travel influencers" are more about particular destinations and their experiences there. The mountain Yakedake is definitely not paying anyone to talk about it.
Interestingly, we found that the suggestions Anthony Bourdain's old shows have once again become "hole in the walls" because so many of the contemporary travelers follow suggestions from tiktok or...
Interestingly, we found that the suggestions Anthony Bourdain's old shows have once again become "hole in the walls" because so many of the contemporary travelers follow suggestions from tiktok or instagram. Anecdotally it seems to be pretty true.
I think ultimately it almost doesn't matter, because it's simply so cheap to produce this sort of (fake) content. If you lose someone's trust - if you lose almost everyone's trust - who cares?...
I think ultimately it almost doesn't matter, because it's simply so cheap to produce this sort of (fake) content. If you lose someone's trust - if you lose almost everyone's trust - who cares? Just spin up another account.
Similarly, it's hard to gain followers, but launch 10,000 bots and one of them is almost guaranteed to take off.
I wondered about that as well. How easy will it be to get any of these to gain a following considering how hard it is for a real person? That's the other thing that I think will make AI...
I wondered about that as well. How easy will it be to get any of these to gain a following considering how hard it is for a real person? That's the other thing that I think will make AI influencers an up hill battle (and I'll be very disappointed if these somehow become more popular than humans). That said, I'm not sure the accidental death of influencer culture would be an inherently net negative to society either. Bit of a toss up for me and hard to know how to feel.
A lot of what's hard for a real person is content creation. Going places, writing scripts, recording themselves, photographing things, etc. If all of that is replaced with AI images and videos,...
A lot of what's hard for a real person is content creation. Going places, writing scripts, recording themselves, photographing things, etc. If all of that is replaced with AI images and videos, the cost craters. And then you can spam hundreds of accounts with variations of the same image and personality for the cost of one trip to Europe for one person. It's not that any one account will be as effective to start as one influencer, but they're much cheaper.
My parents are no fools and I've discussed AI with them numerous occasions - they still frequently can't spot it even when they do place the little "ai generated" tag. Without me I'm pretty...
My parents are no fools and I've discussed AI with them numerous occasions - they still frequently can't spot it even when they do place the little "ai generated" tag. Without me I'm pretty certain they would have no idea what AI even really is. I think these influencers are for them.
With a couple more seniors in my life, I find that they just don't care as much if something is fake: they're watching content because it's enjoyable. If it contains unbelievably cute animals, or...
With a couple more seniors in my life, I find that they just don't care as much if something is fake: they're watching content because it's enjoyable. If it contains unbelievably cute animals, or unbelievably sexy women, or unbelievably gorgeous scenery, it just feels nice to watch them for how it makes them feel. Maybe because they didn't grow up with anime? I don't watch anime for realism; but I also watch CGI heavy live action films. It's sort of like that for them.
"Why are you watching AI slop" is answered with "because I don't usually watch much animated/ generated content that is new, interesting and novel for me".
I think the humans behind the influencers are right to target age group above Gen X/ the millennials: they have more money and they enjoy the content more.
It's about flooding social media with slop to get your brain to subliminally think about product/service. Even if you do know its slop, you're still thinking about the product and that's a win in...
It's about flooding social media with slop to get your brain to subliminally think about product/service. Even if you do know its slop, you're still thinking about the product and that's a win in their book.
No, see, you're placing value along the top axis, but most advertising/audience is aiming for the bottom axis of influence Fake Real 0------5------10 Not Sexy
No, see, you're placing value along the top axis, but most advertising/audience is aiming for the bottom axis of influence
The framing of this article is weird. They are setting it up as a social media thing, but really it's about advertisement agencies trying to replace independent contractors in with in house AI...
The framing of this article is weird. They are setting it up as a social media thing, but really it's about advertisement agencies trying to replace independent contractors in with in house AI content. It rubs me the wrong way, because the advertisement agencies are themselves the ones responsible for influencer marketing. The influencers aren't inherently lazy rent seekers, they are a (a sometimes shady) business that exists to circumvent the fact that people don't trust ads. So this is advertisers asking themselves how they can get away with lying to people while spending less money. Because they are already (sometimes) lying with the use influencers, and it is most likely that the most truthful ads cost them the most money to make, because it requires on location filming of actual real things.
I have mixed feelings on the end results of their true intentions, as I feel like ads are just a constant stream of garbage that really shouldn't exist. So this is a story of a fresh new less ethical garbage replacing the currently existing garbage. I feel like I really draw the line if the AI is just showing completely non existent things in the ads. Like mountains or buildings that aren't real. An ad showing someone hiking a waterfall, and in real life the closest waterfall to that location is 800 miles away in a different state or country.
Overall, I hated being confronted with this topic.
What got me is that yea, the influencers who support themselves by influencing are paid advertisements, but they didn’t start out that way, they started out as people making videos. They...
What got me is that yea, the influencers who support themselves by influencing are paid advertisements, but they didn’t start out that way, they started out as people making videos. They accumulated a following off their real videos and THEN sold themselves.
The ai was always an advertisement. It was always fake. There was never any quality. Why use an ai influencer over an actual raw paid ad? Would that really work?
I think at this point, most of the people making a living being an influencer are doing that for a living because that's what they set out to do. It may have been true a few years ago that there...
I think at this point, most of the people making a living being an influencer are doing that for a living because that's what they set out to do. It may have been true a few years ago that there were some people just posting their personal travel pictures on Instagram because they're passionate about the places they're visiting who got offered brand deals after some time. Nowadays, there's a set strategy for the types of pictures you need to post to get noticed by brands, influencers proactively reach out to them, or hire management companies that do so for them, and the whole pipeline has become a business. They're just small ad agencies focused on a single person as the public face, there's nothing grassroots about them anymore.
Yeah thats true I guess there are bottom of the barrel types who’s videos offer no substance, just like there are those people in every industry, the people min maxing a niche to squeeze money out...
Yeah thats true I guess there are bottom of the barrel types who’s videos offer no substance, just like there are those people in every industry, the people min maxing a niche to squeeze money out of the market instead of producing any value.
But they’re still people, and so the ones which are successful still have some special bit of creativity that sets them apart from the other wannabe influencers
I’m not sure AI will have that. I’m not sure what would set an AI video apart from all the other AI videos. Just like how all advertising looks the same these days
I don’t follow any travel influencers, but it seems to me that, if they do it professionally, they could do it well or badly. Similarly for whoever might be generating videos using AI.
I don’t follow any travel influencers, but it seems to me that, if they do it professionally, they could do it well or badly. Similarly for whoever might be generating videos using AI.
Warren Buffett on the Geico gecko: Maybe they could make these influencers animated characters, to avoid confusion?
Warren Buffett on the Geico gecko:
The gecko, I should add, has one particularly endearing quality – he works without pay. Unlike a human spokesperson, he never gets a swelled head from his fame nor does he have an agent to constantly remind us how valuable he is. I love the little guy.
Maybe they could make these influencers animated characters, to avoid confusion?
Social media posts by A.I.-created travel avatars cost far less to produce, yet look and sound real. Human influencers worry they’re being elbowed out.
Random technical thought I had about this: I’m sure the people behind these “AI influencers” are training custom LoRAs to preserve consistency of their characters’ appearance across many images....
Random technical thought I had about this: I’m sure the people behind these “AI influencers” are training custom LoRAs to preserve consistency of their characters’ appearance across many images. But if they’re being paid to promote specific places, their sponsors also have an interest in making sure the locations are accurately depicted.
I doubt they’re doing this now but I could totally see high-profile destinations preparing their own LoRA packages for distribution to influencer account creators. It’s one thing to render a character in a generic vineyard or with a vaguely familiar structure out of focus in the background. But the next level is convincingly recreating those places’ unique real-world architectural details, works of art, vistas, etc. without hallucinations. That’s going to be important to sponsors who want to avoid being misrepresented and feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. To do this right would require photographers to go on location and intensively image (and annotate) these sites for model training. I can totally see that becoming a new niche profession with real money involved, if this AI influencer trend has staying power.
I guess that idea goes further than travel content. Any brand sponsors are going to want to ensure their products are pictured accurately in AI imagery. If they want shots of the influencer wearing their clothes, eating their food, driving their cars, whatever — to do that right is going to require lots of tailor-made LoRAs. Demand for that could conceivably lead to a whole new cottage industry.
I'm not so optimistic that we'll have money for humans to capture realism. Take Coca-Cola for example. Their 2024 AI ads were based on an older TV campaign But they didn't bother modelling their...
I'm not so optimistic that we'll have money for humans to capture realism. Take Coca-Cola for example. Their 2024 AI ads were based on an older TV campaign
For the 1995 'Holidays Are Coming' campaign, Industrial Light & Magic built physical miniatures and used thousands of real incandescent bulbs to create iconic glow
The irony is that Coca-Cola still relies on that reality. Even as they flood our feeds with AI-generated renders, they are simultaneously running their Holiday Caravan tour across the country.
But they didn't bother modelling their own trucks using decades old CGI technology, they went with AI generated wheels that don't turn and trucks morph, then actually pushed it out on air. This year's ad isn't much better¹
So, if they cared, how you described it would be how it works to have consistent and realistic gens, but I'm not convinced they care at all.
Edit: I see @Winther also referenced coke. On a "this is so creepy" polar bear cub with twinned paws horror level, this year's ad is much better, but on an authenticity "always the real thing (their jingo)" note it's about as flat and fake as last year.
For Coca-Cola it's all about fantasy, not the product. This is not about whether the flavored sugar water tastes good. I can't get too worked up about what level of fakery they put in their...
For Coca-Cola it's all about fantasy, not the product. This is not about whether the flavored sugar water tastes good. I can't get too worked up about what level of fakery they put in their commercials.
This is a prescient example you've presented. If you look at Amazon much of the Chinese brand clothing is modeled by a white person. Whether male or female, they look almost like stock imagery but...
If they want shots of the influencer wearing their clothes, eating their food, driving their cars, whatever — to do that right is going to require lots of tailor-made LoRAs. Demand for that could conceivably lead to a whole new cottage industry.
This is a prescient example you've presented. If you look at Amazon much of the Chinese brand clothing is modeled by a white person. Whether male or female, they look almost like stock imagery but more realistic than a quick photoshop of the brand's clothing on top of a (potentially stolen) photo of a model. Vistaprint and other print-on-demand use similar technologies to virtually impose your uploaded image onto a stock model and it happens within the time between page loads.
If industry is already doing this, and China is able to cheaply do it as well, then we're already only a couple steps away from using AI to do the same thing at higher and more impressive qualities to directly target not just the demographics, but the ethnographics that they want to market their brand(s) towards.
I'm left to wonder how effective an AI influencer is the moment people realize they're fake. Even if you know a person is being paid for a promotion, you still know it's a person delivering the message. I feel like there's a level of trust between influencers and their audience (regardless of how well placed that trust is). If I was watching a video or reading a post and I realized the whole thing was AI generated, I'd immediately disbelieve everything I'd heard because I don't trust AI to be factual, especially if I'm looking for opinions and first hand experiences. I imagine that's a lot of the value a travel influencer provides for their followers and I have to wonder if that same people who pay attention to influencers (a demographic I don't really fall into) will actually pay attention to these AI accounts.
Part of me feels like an idea like this is dead on arrival, but I've been surprised so often at how people choose to engage with AI so far (like people who "date" chat bots) that I won't be surprised either way. Strange times.
I don't really understand the purpose of travel influencers honestly. I was shocked to see the statistics that "73 percent of consumers say an influencer’s recommendation has helped them choose a destination, a hotel or another element of a trip."
They're paid spokespeople that people choose to voluntarily engage with for some reason.
Like yeah, an AI influencer won't be real, or factual but... neither will a human influencer. Both of them are being fed the exact content that the brand wants them to promote.
I wonder if "travel influencer" in that statistic is including a broader definition than what we're thinking.
For example, I sometimes use TripAdvisor and even leave reviews myself, particularly with hotels. My Instagram, up until this year where I kinda stopped posting, has almost entirely been photos from my travels. Am I a travel influencer? Maybe, by one definition. Is anyone paying me? No...🙁
I watch some YouTubers based out in Japan who occasionally do travel vlogs in Japan. The channels aren't entirely devoted to travel in Japan; they talk about other Japan-related topics. But if I was looking for things to do in Japan, would I look at their recommendations? Absolutely. I've already some of the places they've been to my hypothetical Japan trip itinerary (though I might going next year finally!).
Then I also think about people like Steve Ricks, Samantha Brown, and the late Anthony Bourdain. They may not be influencers in the way we think about influencers, but they've definitely had an influence on millions of people's travel plans over the years.
So I could see how 73% of consumers are looking to "travel influencers."
There's a pretty important distinction between Anthony Bourdain, Steve Ricks, people who vlog about their personal travel, and even your personal Instagram feed versus a "professional influencer".
Namely, the former is doing what they do either because they enjoy it, and they're not getting compensated for it, or they're getting compensated for it by some independent party that just wants to produce interesting content.
Travel influencers aren't doing that. They're getting paid by the hotels they say to visit. They're getting paid by the airlines they say to travel with. They're getting paid by the bathing suit company they say to buy the products of.
It's the difference between making a decision of where to visit because you saw a travel review saying it's a good value versus deciding to go there because you saw an ad on tv.
Professional travel influencers aren't reviewers. They're marketers. The only thing that their endorsement means is that whatever brand they're endorsing had the money to pay them.
I don't know if that statistic makes that distinction, but to me, it's the most important one there is when determining whether or not someone is an "influencer".
I appreciate the explanation and I understood that before your comment.
My point is, do the people who are asked the question understand that?
I am appalled by what I see on Instagram these days (not personally, I don't have an account -- but sometimes I ask friends if I can take a look at their feed). Literally every influencer, at even the slightest hint of popularity, starts hawking random drop-shipped crap. They don't even attempt to hide the fact that they're sponsored, or that they don't use any of this crap. They just create tons of content about it in the hopes that some of their loyal followers buy it simply through association.
It's wild to me because in the techy communities that I participate in, sponcon has been considered cancer for many years. To a point where even the popular "influencer" types often and assertively remind users than sponsors are not given editorial privileges, or that they aren't sponsored at all, just trying something that they were interested in with their own money.
I just can't understand the mindset of someone who buys, say, a showerhead simply because they recognize the personality who is pushing it from other social media posts. I always take a critical eye to sponsored or recommendation posts from people I follow. I've unfollowed RSS feeds and Mastodon accounts simply because I didn't trust the opinions of the people running those accounts. This reminds me of celebrity tie-ins, but on a broad scale -- think Snoop Dogg wine, or celebrities in TV ads, or when Artie gets bamboozled by Armagnac in The Sopranos. Basically ponzi schemes where the entire schtick is selling crap down the line until the biggest, poorest fool gets screwed.
The mentality of the general public in the past few decades seems to have shifted from viewing taking a principled stand on things being a virtue, to getting the bag by any means necessary being a virtue.
People would accuse bands, celebrities, politicians and so forth of being sellouts for blatantly hawking brands in the past. It's hard to imagine that kind of criticism towards any sort of mainstream public figure nowadays.
The side hustle of selling your popularity for money seems to be something that's normalized, accepted, and even encouraged by most people nowadays.
I don't know what that says about the world we currently live in, but it's pretty disturbing to me.
Something I will never understand is a public figure who already has so much wealth they could never spend it cheapening their image by hawking scams/garbage for even more money. Why would anyone do this?
Look at this years Coca Cola Christmas ad. It is one of the biggest most well known brand in the world with billions in profits. They certainly have the resources to produce a top quality good looking Christmas ad. Yet they have chosen to use AI this time. If they are okay with AI slop, then there is no higher commercial standard to live up to.
Do you have a link to that? This is the first I’ve heard of it.
https://youtu.be/5ixzbQVhXtA
"It's always the real thing"
Yikes! That’s atrocious. Thanks for the link.
It's actually far better than last year's
https://youtu.be/E3-J0MwvBSI
Oh wow, I'm out of the loop. Agreed, this year's is better than that but it's a very low bar.
I don't think that's really the case? Maybe for like a hotel, but in my experience most "travel influencers" are more about particular destinations and their experiences there. The mountain Yakedake is definitely not paying anyone to talk about it.
Interestingly, we found that the suggestions Anthony Bourdain's old shows have once again become "hole in the walls" because so many of the contemporary travelers follow suggestions from tiktok or instagram. Anecdotally it seems to be pretty true.
I think ultimately it almost doesn't matter, because it's simply so cheap to produce this sort of (fake) content. If you lose someone's trust - if you lose almost everyone's trust - who cares? Just spin up another account.
Similarly, it's hard to gain followers, but launch 10,000 bots and one of them is almost guaranteed to take off.
I wondered about that as well. How easy will it be to get any of these to gain a following considering how hard it is for a real person? That's the other thing that I think will make AI influencers an up hill battle (and I'll be very disappointed if these somehow become more popular than humans). That said, I'm not sure the accidental death of influencer culture would be an inherently net negative to society either. Bit of a toss up for me and hard to know how to feel.
A lot of what's hard for a real person is content creation. Going places, writing scripts, recording themselves, photographing things, etc. If all of that is replaced with AI images and videos, the cost craters. And then you can spam hundreds of accounts with variations of the same image and personality for the cost of one trip to Europe for one person. It's not that any one account will be as effective to start as one influencer, but they're much cheaper.
My parents are no fools and I've discussed AI with them numerous occasions - they still frequently can't spot it even when they do place the little "ai generated" tag. Without me I'm pretty certain they would have no idea what AI even really is. I think these influencers are for them.
With a couple more seniors in my life, I find that they just don't care as much if something is fake: they're watching content because it's enjoyable. If it contains unbelievably cute animals, or unbelievably sexy women, or unbelievably gorgeous scenery, it just feels nice to watch them for how it makes them feel. Maybe because they didn't grow up with anime? I don't watch anime for realism; but I also watch CGI heavy live action films. It's sort of like that for them.
"Why are you watching AI slop" is answered with "because I don't usually watch much animated/ generated content that is new, interesting and novel for me".
I think the humans behind the influencers are right to target age group above Gen X/ the millennials: they have more money and they enjoy the content more.
It's about flooding social media with slop to get your brain to subliminally think about product/service. Even if you do know its slop, you're still thinking about the product and that's a win in their book.
No, see, you're placing value along the top axis, but most advertising/audience is aiming for the bottom axis of influence
The framing of this article is weird. They are setting it up as a social media thing, but really it's about advertisement agencies trying to replace independent contractors in with in house AI content. It rubs me the wrong way, because the advertisement agencies are themselves the ones responsible for influencer marketing. The influencers aren't inherently lazy rent seekers, they are a (a sometimes shady) business that exists to circumvent the fact that people don't trust ads. So this is advertisers asking themselves how they can get away with lying to people while spending less money. Because they are already (sometimes) lying with the use influencers, and it is most likely that the most truthful ads cost them the most money to make, because it requires on location filming of actual real things.
I have mixed feelings on the end results of their true intentions, as I feel like ads are just a constant stream of garbage that really shouldn't exist. So this is a story of a fresh new less ethical garbage replacing the currently existing garbage. I feel like I really draw the line if the AI is just showing completely non existent things in the ads. Like mountains or buildings that aren't real. An ad showing someone hiking a waterfall, and in real life the closest waterfall to that location is 800 miles away in a different state or country.
Overall, I hated being confronted with this topic.
What got me is that yea, the influencers who support themselves by influencing are paid advertisements, but they didn’t start out that way, they started out as people making videos. They accumulated a following off their real videos and THEN sold themselves.
The ai was always an advertisement. It was always fake. There was never any quality. Why use an ai influencer over an actual raw paid ad? Would that really work?
I think at this point, most of the people making a living being an influencer are doing that for a living because that's what they set out to do. It may have been true a few years ago that there were some people just posting their personal travel pictures on Instagram because they're passionate about the places they're visiting who got offered brand deals after some time. Nowadays, there's a set strategy for the types of pictures you need to post to get noticed by brands, influencers proactively reach out to them, or hire management companies that do so for them, and the whole pipeline has become a business. They're just small ad agencies focused on a single person as the public face, there's nothing grassroots about them anymore.
Yeah thats true I guess there are bottom of the barrel types who’s videos offer no substance, just like there are those people in every industry, the people min maxing a niche to squeeze money out of the market instead of producing any value.
But they’re still people, and so the ones which are successful still have some special bit of creativity that sets them apart from the other wannabe influencers
I’m not sure AI will have that. I’m not sure what would set an AI video apart from all the other AI videos. Just like how all advertising looks the same these days
I don’t follow any travel influencers, but it seems to me that, if they do it professionally, they could do it well or badly. Similarly for whoever might be generating videos using AI.
Warren Buffett on the Geico gecko:
Maybe they could make these influencers animated characters, to avoid confusion?
Warren Buffett
Thanks, fixed.
...whether AI or NI, it's tough to buy into an oh-no-won't-someone-think-of-the-influencers narrative when they're brazen sellouts either way...
https://archive.is/cm9wS
Random technical thought I had about this: I’m sure the people behind these “AI influencers” are training custom LoRAs to preserve consistency of their characters’ appearance across many images. But if they’re being paid to promote specific places, their sponsors also have an interest in making sure the locations are accurately depicted.
I doubt they’re doing this now but I could totally see high-profile destinations preparing their own LoRA packages for distribution to influencer account creators. It’s one thing to render a character in a generic vineyard or with a vaguely familiar structure out of focus in the background. But the next level is convincingly recreating those places’ unique real-world architectural details, works of art, vistas, etc. without hallucinations. That’s going to be important to sponsors who want to avoid being misrepresented and feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. To do this right would require photographers to go on location and intensively image (and annotate) these sites for model training. I can totally see that becoming a new niche profession with real money involved, if this AI influencer trend has staying power.
I guess that idea goes further than travel content. Any brand sponsors are going to want to ensure their products are pictured accurately in AI imagery. If they want shots of the influencer wearing their clothes, eating their food, driving their cars, whatever — to do that right is going to require lots of tailor-made LoRAs. Demand for that could conceivably lead to a whole new cottage industry.
I'm not so optimistic that we'll have money for humans to capture realism. Take Coca-Cola for example. Their 2024 AI ads were based on an older TV campaign
But they didn't bother modelling their own trucks using decades old CGI technology, they went with AI generated wheels that don't turn and trucks morph, then actually pushed it out on air. This year's ad isn't much better¹
So, if they cared, how you described it would be how it works to have consistent and realistic gens, but I'm not convinced they care at all.
Edit: I see @Winther also referenced coke. On a "this is so creepy" polar bear cub with twinned paws horror level, this year's ad is much better, but on an authenticity "always the real thing (their jingo)" note it's about as flat and fake as last year.
For Coca-Cola it's all about fantasy, not the product. This is not about whether the flavored sugar water tastes good. I can't get too worked up about what level of fakery they put in their commercials.
Hahaha fair enough point, artificial sugar water doesn't have to have realistic ad :)
This is a prescient example you've presented. If you look at Amazon much of the Chinese brand clothing is modeled by a white person. Whether male or female, they look almost like stock imagery but more realistic than a quick photoshop of the brand's clothing on top of a (potentially stolen) photo of a model. Vistaprint and other print-on-demand use similar technologies to virtually impose your uploaded image onto a stock model and it happens within the time between page loads.
If industry is already doing this, and China is able to cheaply do it as well, then we're already only a couple steps away from using AI to do the same thing at higher and more impressive qualities to directly target not just the demographics, but the ethnographics that they want to market their brand(s) towards.