AI-Created 'Virtual Influencers' Are Stealing Business From Humans

erek

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 19, 2005
Messages
10,900
in other news the NYT also sues OpenAI

"Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as haircare line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria's Secret. Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media -- despite the fact that she is entirely fictional. Aitana is a "virtual influencer" created using artificial intelligence tools, one of the hundreds of digital avatars that have broken into the growing $21 billion content creator economy. Their emergence has led to worry from human influencers their income is being cannibalized and under threat from digital rivals. That concern is shared by people in more established professions that their livelihoods are under threat from generative AI -- technology that can spew out humanlike text, images and code in seconds. But those behind the hyper-realistic AI creations argue they are merely disrupting an overinflated market.

"We were taken aback by the skyrocketing rates influencers charge nowadays. That got us thinking, 'What if we just create our own influencer?'" said Diana Nunez, co-founder of the Barcelona-based agency The Clueless, which created Aitana. "The rest is history. We unintentionally created a monster. A beautiful one, though." Over the past few years, there have been high-profile partnerships between luxury brands and virtual influencers, including Kim Kardashian's make-up line KKW Beauty with Noonoouri, and Louis Vuitton with Ayayi. Instagram analysis of an H&M advert featuring virtual influencer Kuki found that it reached 11 times more people and resulted in a 91 per cent decrease in cost per person remembering the advert, compared with a traditional ad. "It is not influencing purchase like a human influencer would, but it is driving awareness, favorability and recall for the brand," said Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy, and former head of Meta's creator innovations team.
"Influencers themselves have a lot of negative associations related to being fake or superficial, which makes people feel less concerned about the concept of that being replaced with AI or virtual influencers," said Rebecca McGrath, associate director for media and technology at Mintel.

"For a brand, they have total control versus a real person who comes with potential controversy, their own demands, their own opinions," McGrath added."

https://slashdot.org/story/23/12/29...influencers-are-stealing-business-from-humans
 
in other news the NYT also sues OpenAI
1703919819190.png
 
As happy as I am to see vapid influencer THOTS losing jobs, the idea of creating fictional backgrounds and life stories seems unethical. When we watch commercials we know those people are actors.
 
Views-Follows-Engagement has already happened. Sales per view/engagement is next. While influencers and follows(ers) can easily be replaced by bots, (and good riddance for the most part), actual sales can't. At least not yet. Bots don't currently have spending power. Will that always be the case though?
 
There are many legitimate issues here, even if we put aside the (still significant and worth dealing in their own right) exploitative natures of the advertising industry as it is allowed to exist. For "influencers" authenticity is what is often marketed - the presumption of it being a "real" person recommending things because it is in line with their preference, is what was supposed to set it aside from typical advertising. Things get muddy enough when "influencers' may simply recommend things for a paycheck one way or another, but if AI generated faux characters give the appearance of being a physical, biological human being with intent that cannot be allowed to continue and is an outright scam.

An advertising firm creating a a pink haired virtual model on which they can display their products is not necessarily any different then Charmin using CGI bears to sell toilet paper - so long as people realize that the model is no different than the family of bears complaining the TP is not soft enough or strong enough. The bears have no opinions outside that whatever ad agency's creative division creates them to have, and the same is true of any 'virtual influencer". However, if they go outof their way to disguise this and have the virtual influencer presented in a way they could be a real person in some sort of advertorial about how great a product is, to hell with that! People must know immediately upon reading or watching any content involved that it is a created ad, not that some person has chosen to endorse a product of their own volition and, from what it appears with a lot of "influencer" culture, its obvious they're going to try to obscure this fact as much as possible as the success of the campaign is based on the perception of authenticity. This is bad enough when its flesh and blood humans, where people run themselves ragged in order to always be permanently living a marketable, photogenic, glamourous life that exudes whatever vibe they're pushing (wellness, fashion, travel etc..) but its going to get even worse when the big money industries can just spin up a virtual influencer (or a whole line of them, disposably) who will never complain about the terms of the contract , the pay, or anything else.

We should have stopped this garbage years ago before easily generated AI/LLM content could be leveraged as it was exploitative enough with actual people, but if this is allowed to continue then it will only get worse and it will be harder and harder for real people to compete with individuals and concepts spun out of wholecloth and sophisticated enough to be perceived as human at first glance. There are many other problems related to AI and its unfortunate that so many so called opponents seem to be focusing on "dey took our jerbs" elements (like "artists" or anyone else upset about LLM training data demanding a NO AI NO LOOK flag for everything) , instead of instituting proper regulations on things like this and most importantly ensuring that top tier AI models are not exclusively the purview of a handful of megacorps proprietary models and proprietary training data, doled out to everone else software-as-a-service and a trade-secret laden blackbox; instead we should be demanding that AI/LLM , especialy those that are used in anything important , for the public good etc... are open source and self-hostable, with open training data, so the benefit of AI can be distributed widely rather than , proprietary and expropriated data as a one way funnel from everyone else that turns into massive profit for a few.
 
As happy as I am to see vapid influencer THOTS losing jobs, the idea of creating fictional backgrounds and life stories seems unethical. When we watch commercials we know those people are actors.
Wasn’t influencer and Thot words of the year in 2015 or 16? Hmm 🤔 🧐

Couldn’t the fictional backgrounds be pumped through generative ai like ChatGPT?
 
I see AI destroying Hollywood in the future. People creating their own movies in a huge way.
That will never happen there's an astronomical level of incredible creative genius behind "Yeah that same story but this time he's a strong black single mom that don't need no man."
Or gawdawful super hero CGI fights.
Or toy franchise advertising disguised as a manifesto of liberation and equality.
Or sanitized propaganda about deploying weapons of mass destruction against the civilian population of a nation that had been negotiating surrender for a month.

Hmm... You might be right, but it will never work without billions of advertising dollars!
 
As happy as I am to see vapid influencer THOTS losing jobs, the idea of creating fictional backgrounds and life stories seems unethical. When we watch commercials we know those people are actors.
Tool's Hooker with a Penis from 1996 was prescient:
'All you read and wear or see is a product begging for your fat-ass dirty dollar shut up and buy, buy, buy'
 
you don't say.... AI is just basement hobby. It will never put real humans further into poverty.

It's just the most foolish pursuit I've ever seen. People are literally and fanatically researching thier own obsolescence. Absolutely rediculous and you know who you are.

And you're going to post to rebut this because you're living examples of cognitive dissonance.
 
you don't say.... AI is just basement hobby. It will never put real humans further into poverty.
The stuff I'm seeing used by creators is rather good. It still needs humans behind it, just less of them. Especially if people are injecting their ideologies into media then it gets easier to move towards AI. I'd rather have a real voice actor just to save time, but eventually it'll be to save money. Not just talking about woke people but people like Justin Roiland which needed replacements for Rick and Morty.
It's just the most foolish pursuit I've ever seen. People are literally and fanatically researching thier own obsolescence. Absolutely rediculous and you know who you are.
It's been said for decades that eventually capitalism will destroy itself. You act like this is a new thing.

View: https://youtu.be/Yvs7f4UaKLo?si=tNBHFcRR-v87ohaP
And you're going to post to rebut this because you're living examples of cognitive dissonance.
Kinda yea, but it's not that simple. As long as greed and shareholders exists then there will always be a need to find cheaper ways to make products. This doesn't always mean better products, as it usually ends up being worse products. You won't get AI to have the same level of quality as a real human, but that doesn't stop people from trying. On one hand it gives content creators with little money a powerful tool, but on the other hand it gives scammers an easy tool to scam people out of money and also allows corporations to go cheap on their labor force.
 
Views-Follows-Engagement has already happened. Sales per view/engagement is next. While influencers and follows(ers) can easily be replaced by bots, (and good riddance for the most part), actual sales can't. At least not yet. Bots don't currently have spending power. Will that always be the case though?

That's the problem with the whole system, right? At some point those paying for ads have to be wondering if they are actually driving business, or if they are just being "viewed" by a bunch of bots.

ROI for advertising is notoriously difficult to measure, as it is rarely direct. You usually can't just look at sales before and after a campaign to determine it's effectiveness. Brand recognition and other things are notoriously indirect and long term.

I have a feeling that eventually lots of advertisers are going to realize they have been paying for shit for years, and start scaling back.
 
That's the problem with the whole system, right? At some point those paying for ads have to be wondering if they are actually driving business, or if they are just being "viewed" by a bunch of bots.

ROI for advertising is notoriously difficult to measure, as it is rarely direct. You usually can't just look at sales before and after a campaign to determine it's effectiveness. Brand recognition and other things are notoriously indirect and long term.

I have a feeling that eventually lots of advertisers are going to realize they have been paying for shit for years, and start scaling back.

It would likely move to more direct tailored advertising. "your current budget has room for a nice new vacuum and according to your last one you bought it is aging and should be upgraded. and it could be here tomorrow, shall we ship one to you? click here to purchase".
 
It would likely move to more direct tailored advertising. "your current budget has room for a nice new vacuum and according to your last one you bought it is aging and should be upgraded. and it could be here tomorrow, shall we ship one to you? click here to purchase".
This shit has to be stopped.

It needs to be a crime to collect any data about anyone else without their explicit written permission. EULA's shouldn't count, and this data sharing must be opt in, and no service being provided being contingent upon opting in.

We need to return advertising to the 90's or die trying.
 
This shit has to be stopped.

It needs to be a crime to collect any data about anyone else without their explicit written permission. EULA's shouldn't count, and this data sharing must be opt in, and no service being provided being contingent upon opting in.

We need to return advertising to the 90's or die trying.

That stuff is just extra annoying to people that don't care about it and want their "free" products. Which is the majority of people. Most people will gladly give away their data for free services than pay for them.
 
This shit has to be stopped.

It needs to be a crime to collect any data about anyone else without their explicit written permission. EULA's shouldn't count, and this data sharing must be opt in, and no service being provided being contingent upon opting in.

We need to return advertising to the 90's or die trying.
Oh i agree. It just doesnt seem to be close to a breaking point yet. A few of us are upset about how invasive it all is, but as long as the masses can watch their streamers, not much will change. Soon itll be invasive advertising to give you the ability to watch AI curated content, with product placement within it. Not you specifically of course. :)
 
That stuff is just extra annoying to people that don't care about it and want their "free" products. Which is the majority of people. Most people will gladly give away their data for free services than pay for them.

I've never been one to care about what the uneducated lowest common denominator wants.

I say shut it all down. If that means we kill all of silicon valley, so be it...

...but I'm sure they'll find a way to survive. Just move back to contextual ads. Contextual ads don't pay much now, but if spy-ads go away, then they will rise in value again.
 
I've never been one to care about what the uneducated lowest common denominator wants.

I say shut it all down. If that means we kill all of silicon valley, so be it...

...but I'm sure they'll find a way to survive. Just move back to contextual ads. Contextual ads don't pay much now, but if spy-ads go away, then they will rise in value again.
They're not uneducated though. People know and will gladly say yes.
 
They're not uneducated though. People know and will gladly say yes.

Very few people actually know the extent of modern data collection, and what exactly they are agreeing to.

I didn't mean uneducated as in "not having gone to school". I meant "uneducated about the topic and what they are actually agreeing to"

And even so, people who don't care about shit are societies biggest problem. Quite frankly,. if they are truly aware, and still don't care, then I don't care what they want. They can go burn in hell for all I care.
 
Very few people actually know the extent of modern data collection, and what exactly they are agreeing to.

I didn't mean uneducated as in "not having gone to school". I meant "uneducated about the topic and what they are actually agreeing to"

And even so, people who don't care about shit are societies biggest problem. Quite frankly,. if they are truly aware, and still don't care, then I don't care what they want. They can go burn in hell for all I care.

I know exactly what you mean, but you're undestimating what people know.
If you ask people if they think their phone is listening to their conversations they will say yes because facebook served them an advertisement for something they were talking about yesterday.
They will continue to use facebook and do not want to pay any money to use facebook, google maps, google anything, etc. They're well aware their data is sold, and well aware the government uses the data. It's worth it to them.

You have a very authoritarian attitude where you're assuming everyone is a dumbass and they should live by your rules. They would hate you for it. They're happy with what they have.
 
You have a very authoritarian attitude where you're assuming everyone is a dumbass and they should live by your rules. They would hate you for it. They're happy with what they have.

That's only because the industry has remained them, but little by little I triducting this shit over 20 years.

Occasionally overstepping, backing off and apologizing and then just blasting right through it again.

It's a freaking Stockholm Syndrome at this point.

25 years ago you would have had a bloody armed revolt over this shit, and now people have just resigned and given up and accepted it. I beat most of them are not embracing it with open arms, but rather feel like it is hopeless and just given up.

Except for the kids of the last 20 years who have grown up in the era of constant surveillance. For them it truly is ignorance, because they do not know the freedom of living in the before times, just like how many Chinese or Soviet citizens didn't miss democracy because they never knew it.

That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be fought by any means necessary.

To be clear, I have no issue with a voluntary "support us by opting in to our money making tracking scheme" type solution. I don't think many people would opt in, but you never know asking doesn't hurt. But when services become ubiquitous in society to the point where you cannot opt out, then they have to have some protection schemes associated with them, and implied spying should never be ok.

We can't keep treating these services like they are niche and voluntary. Most people cannot get by without them in 2024, or heck, couldn't even in 2010.

These are our most basic freedoms that are being stolen from us. These are the types of things that revolutions are based in. A right to real privacy is an issue just like no taxation without representation.

This shit requires consent, and the people who want this garbage can't consent for me.
 
Last edited:
The stuff I'm seeing used by creators is rather good. It still needs humans behind it, just less of them. Especially if people are injecting their ideologies into media then it gets easier to move towards AI. I'd rather have a real voice actor just to save time, but eventually it'll be to save money. Not just talking about woke people but people like Justin Roiland which needed replacements for Rick and Morty.

It's been said for decades that eventually capitalism will destroy itself. You act like this is a new thing.

View: https://youtu.be/Yvs7f4UaKLo?si=tNBHFcRR-v87ohaP

Kinda yea, but it's not that simple. As long as greed and shareholders exists then there will always be a need to find cheaper ways to make products. This doesn't always mean better products, as it usually ends up being worse products. You won't get AI to have the same level of quality as a real human, but that doesn't stop people from trying. On one hand it gives content creators with little money a powerful tool, but on the other hand it gives scammers an easy tool to scam people out of money and also allows corporations to go cheap on their labor force.

"Alice...your dream dress awaits in store."

ARRRRRRRRGHGHGGHGHH.
 
That stuff is just extra annoying to people that don't care about it and want their "free" products. Which is the majority of people. Most people will gladly give away their data for free services than pay for them.
And then your dad gets a customized flyer from Target plugging diapers, because their analytics guessed--correctly--that you're pregnant.
 
This shit has to be stopped.

It needs to be a crime to collect any data about anyone else without their explicit written permission. EULA's shouldn't count, and this data sharing must be opt in, and no service being provided being contingent upon opting in.
They would just create a pop up and ask you to consent and nobody would look twice when clicking yes. The EU laws are making this harder.
We need to return advertising to the 90's or die trying.
I'd rather not, considering I don't ever see advertising today. Ads are for those who inconvenience themselves by avoiding convenience, and iPhone users. If anything, advertising should be illegal. Used to be illegal to advertise drugs in America but, how else will you know to ask your doctor about a drug that your health insurance won't pay for, assuming you have health insurance in America.
That stuff is just extra annoying to people that don't care about it and want their "free" products. Which is the majority of people. Most people will gladly give away their data for free services than pay for them.
Those free products can actually be free if people just looked someplace else. You know, like that other yewtu.be.
 
I'd rather not, considering I don't ever see advertising today. Ads are for those who inconvenience themselves by avoiding convenience, and iPhone users. If anything, advertising should be illegal. Used to be illegal to advertise drugs in America but, how else will you know to ask your doctor about a drug that your health insurance won't pay for, assuming you have health insurance in America.

As far as I am concerned, it is not the advertising itself that is the problem.

Yes, it is a little annoying, but you can either deal with it or block it.

It is the data collection in order to support modern advertising that is the problem. Whether you are actually viewing the ads or not, that data is still being collected, stored and sold to the highest bidder. And any stored data is vulnerable to attack and/or misuse. It simply should not exist in the first place.

...and there is next to nothing you can do to stop it. You can't even opt out, because if you don't use social media or other services they just buy or otherwise obtain your data from other sources, and some sources you just have to use. You need a bank account. You probably want to watch TV. You need to drive down the highway, and whether or not you use EZpass or just drive through and have them mail you a bill, the data is collected and used. Everything about you is collected, bundled packaged into a profile and then used or sold for any number of reasons. Mostly just for advertising, but it is the non-advertising uses that are the really nefarious ones.

Yes, Europe is better, but its GDPR doesn't go even nearly far enough. Nothing short of a complete ban on the practice will ever be sufficient. Data about a person needs to be defined as something that can only be owned by the person it describes, and anyone else in possession of it has committed a crime, except for some very narrow and strictly defined exceptions.
 
As far as I am concerned, it is not the advertising itself that is the problem.

Yes, it is a little annoying, but you can either deal with it or block it.
Blocking it is getting harder for the average Joe. Everything is now being pushed to cater to you looking at ads, and you don't always have control over this. Billboards are now giant TVs that will distract drivers. Games have ads, movies have ads, ads have ads, influencers are just ads. Make ads illegal I can assure you that society would have drastically improved. Won't entirely stop the data collecting since it's now used for AI training but a lot of that AI training is to figure out a way to show you ads.
It is the data collection in order to support modern advertising that is the problem. Whether you are actually viewing the ads or not, that data is still being collected, stored and sold to the highest bidder. And any stored data is vulnerable to attack and/or misuse. It simply should not exist in the first place.
I agree but you won't stop them unless you stop their incentive, which is mostly ads.
...and there is next to nothing you can do to stop it.
You can, but it takes a special level of tech savviness to do so. Look at Google with the situation with Manifest V3, which they are still delaying. The only reason Google is now pushing for Manifest V3 is because people are slowly learning about adblocking addons. Something so simple that a quick Google of "Ublock Chrome addon" will get you two clicks away from installing it and will result in an infinitely less amount of suffering. Google is now blocking adblockers and they don't care if they lose you because you're messing up their data collection. If you will never buy stuff from the catered ads then you're wasting their time.
You probably want to watch TV.
TV is dead, but yea Streaming services.
You need to drive down the highway, and whether or not you use EZpass or just drive through and have them mail you a bill, the data is collected and used.
Something I've wondered is why is it that turning on and off the use of tolls is not something easily accessible in GPS software? Both Google Maps and Waze makes it hard to find the option to turn on and off avoiding tolls, especially when you're driving. Seems like an intended design.
Everything about you is collected, bundled packaged into a profile and then used or sold for any number of reasons. Mostly just for advertising, but it is the non-advertising uses that are the really nefarious ones.
The non-advertising uses would be to train AI now, which is either going to be used as a tool to sell to businesses or to show you ads. There's also law enforcement, which is even scarier now. The problem is that it's inevitable that they'll get hacked and your data is stolen. We either not play their game which as you pointed out is hard, or we pass some laws which is also hard because the right hates regulation. The best advice I have for the average person is to self educate, but like I said only a fraction of people install Ublock. iPhone users can't even use Ublock but have to instead use AdGuard which is inferior, and 50% of Americans use iPhones. Android users can install Aurora Store and totally avoid Google altogether, but good luck.

Just imagine if everyone woke up one day and decided to install Ublock in their web browser. A lot of data collection businesses would suddenly panic, not because they can't collect data but the data they collected is now useless. There's no moral reason not to, there's no logical reason not to and your quality of life has now just increased significantly. Doesn't matter which web browser you use, as you're just two clicks away from installing it. You might even save money if you bought YouTube Premium. There are ways to avoid the data collection but it would be extremely inconvenient for the average person. By the way, influencers are just human ads, and no matter what you tell people, they will continue to watch them. I still watch some stuff from ActMan but I'm aware enough to know that he is a living ad. People need to realize this stuff.


View: https://youtu.be/svFwx1vFZdU?si=PZUo4SwvDefgvZE1
 
Back
Top