The AI models invading our feeds
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Hello, I'm Lucy Hockings. From the BBC World Service, this is The Global Story. We live in a world of influencers. Whether it's our skincare routine, the clothes we wear or the places we visit on holiday, social media celebrities are shaping our everyday choices. But as technology advances, the lucrative influencer industry is being reshaped by models created using artificial intelligence.

And with some AI influences accumulating massive followings, critics are raising questions. From the unrealistic beauty standards they could set to the accountability of anonymous creators. So as AI models seem certain to play an increasingly prominent role online, are developers conscious of the ethical questions? And are users equipped to decipher what's real from what's artificial intelligence?

With me today is the BBC's cyber correspondent, Joe Tidey. Hi, Joe. Hi. Joe, I think if we were all asked, we would confess that we've tried products, restaurants, clothes, listened to music, all sorts of things, because we've seen it on social media. We are all at the moment being shaped, it seems, by influencers at some stage.

Oh yeah, I think so. I think if you say that your influence are immune, then you're probably lying, aren't you? Because there are certain people and characters and celebrities that we look up to or are interested in, and they have got absolutely enormous followings. So even if you weren't directly impacted, what you might find is that someone in your life has been impacted by them. Can we pinpoint, though, the moment when the concept of social media influences first emerged?

You have to go back to the days of blogging. So early 2000s, early days of the internet, really, people start off, I don't know, a dishwasher review website and they become very passionate about it. They do regular content updates. People find the blogs, read them, become trusted, these individuals who are doing the content.

And then eventually, of course, you'd get advertisers and product owners saying, oh, hang on a minute, that person's got an audience and they're a loyal, trusted audience. Why don't we get them to sponsor our product or get them to review our product? And then before you know it, you start getting a bit of money changing hands. And then, of course, things really kicked off sort of 2004, 5, 6 with the rise of Facebook when suddenly your blog becomes even bigger.

And then we move into YouTube and YouTube sort of took blogging to vlogging and then people became very, very popular on YouTube. So brands came to them. And the difference as well, I think this is really important inflection point in the whole of social media influencing is that's when YouTube started paying back. Hey creators, today we're announcing exciting updates coming to YouTube.

First, we're providing new monetization opportunities and expanded access to more creators with the YouTube Partner Program. So if you were on there doing very, very well, you were getting paid by brands to influence what people bought, but also you were getting paid by YouTube for the views you got, which drives engagement, drives you doing more content, all the rest of it. And then, of course, we're now in this era of...

All sorts of influencing, whether it be through sponsorships on brands or live appearances and filling out, you know, halls and things for content creation in front of your audience. Even lives at home that you can do on TikTok where people can gift you money as well. It's not just about selling products online.

in advertising anymore. It's about having your whole content built around how can I bring in extra revenue? We're looking for a new oven at the moment. And I literally fell down a rabbit hole of influencers around what kind of oven we should get. It was extraordinary the amount of content that was available just on that one thing. And the problem is you've started looking for it now. So now they'll be sending you these things for months. Absolutely. That is exactly what's happening, Jo. But how do influencers earn most of their money now and how much money are they making?

It depends on the platform. So for example, if you're an influencer or a YouTuber on YouTube, then you will get sort of two different revenue streams. One from the video views that YouTube will pay you a share of the ad revenue. And the other one is from deals that you can do in your video. So quite often you'll see people pause their video on YouTube and they'll say, hey, have you seen this new technology product? It's amazing. I've been using it for weeks. And then they carry on with the video after that.

Whereas if you're on Instagram, there's no money back from the company. They've been talking about whether or not to give money back, but it's about the brand sponsorships for your posts, for example, and people can earn a lot. So, for example, Kim Kardashian, hundreds of millions of followers, she would probably be able to command...

hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions of dollars per post if she posts about a particular product. - All right, so I'm gonna take you through my nine step process. Step one is cleanser. I do a few pumps and I mix it with a bit of water to make a creamy foam.

And it leaves my face just feeling super clean but really hydrated. And what we're seeing is more and more of these social networks are realising that if they can get the influencers on board, then they get the audiences on board. And that's what X, or formerly Twitter, is trying to do, is give money back to people who get decent engagement on the platform.

Today, though, we're talking about AI influencers. I think that what an AI influencer is, is probably just in the name. But can you explain to us what we are talking about? What are they? Yes, all the people we've been talking about so far, they've all been real life human beings out there.

Sometimes you wonder with Kim Kardashian. True. That's a point we'll come to as well. You do wonder with some of these people. But anyway, an AI influencer is a creation that's been built by humans in a studio or by an individual hobbyist or something that doesn't exist. So they'll be posting pictures on usually Instagram or occasionally a bit of video potentially, maybe on TikTok. And they'll be living a life as if they're a real person, but they're not. They are an artificial intelligence created person.

product, I suppose. And that's the reason why this is happening now is because of this rise of generative AI. So it's now so simple and easy to make almost, well, yeah, photorealistic images of people that don't exist.

You've been to meet the team in Barcelona behind one of the biggest AI influences at the moment, Aitana. I've recently been introduced to her as well, knowing that we were going to talk about her and have very quickly become quite obsessed with Aitana, actually, showing her to everyone, following her online. But how was she created? Tell us a bit about Aitana.

She was created by a studio in Barcelona called the Clueless Agency. And the story goes that they were becoming a bit fed up with the kind of diva attitude of some of the influencers they were being asked to work with on adverts or sponsorship deals, that kind of thing. So they decided to start playing around with artificial intelligence and loaded up things like, for example, stable diffusion, which is a text image generator. So you can type in anything you want, wait a couple of seconds, and then the AI will produce a picture automatically.

And they thought, hang on, if we create our own model that can build her own following, we can control the person or rather the creation completely. So they did. And they started about a year ago. They created this very attractive sort of, if you can imagine what the Hollywood perfect body would be, that's kind of what Itana is. Chiseled cheekbones. Chiseled cheekbones. Very slim, all the rest of it, you know. And she's got very distinctive long pink hair.

And that, apparently, according to the creators, is one of the reasons why she really stands out. And the thing about these pictures is they are very, very realistic.

You would be hard pressed, really, to know the difference. Genuinely, I did not know when she was first shown to me that she was AI generated. Yeah, I think some people, they might think, oh, I can tell straight away. But I think to the untrained eye, which is, to be honest, most of us, isn't it? You look at this person, you think, wow, OK, that's a real person. And also when I was first shown her, she was on my phone.

And so she's even smaller, so it's harder to see some of the imperfections. Which is how 99% of people will come across Aitana, exactly as you say, on a small screen like a phone. We intend to always try to make it as similar as what an influencer would do. We take a picture with me in the image and we have to replace it with AI.

So we have to play a little bit with lights and shadows to make it as real as possible. And you wouldn't really know it's AI. It's in the profile writing that this is an AI-made creation, but Aitana doesn't just post... They don't just post pictures of Aitana.

Did you see how I almost personified her there? You've got to be so careful with artificial intelligence. But they don't just post pictures of her. They have stories. So on Facebook, you know, you have these things on your reels where you can post, you know, this is what I've been doing today. Ten seconds of her doing shopping, ten seconds of her out for lunch with friends. Well, let's be more specific. In the past few days, it's been Naitana's birthday.

Oh, I didn't know. Happy birthday to you. So they posted her at the table. There were balloons. She'd set the table for people who were coming around for her birthday dinner. That's so interesting. I had a chat with them when I was there saying, are you going to age her? Is she going to age sort of in real time? And they're still deciding whether or not to keep her as a sort of mid-20s or whether or not to age her. Yeah, so it's this whole idea of...

of her being not just a model, but an influencer. So that is someone who lives a life of glamour, of fun, of luxury products. Because, of course, as an influencer, that is crucial. We spent like two months creating this personality and understanding how she would speak, how she would interact with her community. So this is why we believe she has been working and she still works today.

If you're going to be an influencer that posts about your boring life where you don't do anything, no one's going to want to sponsor that. You're not going to hold many Louis Vuitton bags and stuff like that, are you? But they're really particular about what she wears, for instance. Yeah. They make very definite decisions because they've created her with a certain sense of style. So therefore they won't dress her in a certain way. Yeah.

Yeah, and that was interesting when we were in Barcelona because we went out on a shoot with them and they talked us through the process of how they take pictures of nothing and then pictures with someone on the team and then they just swap out the person for Aitana. And it's so sophisticated, this artificial intelligence machine they've built. They wouldn't say exactly which piece of software it is, but we can imagine it's...

sort of stable diffusion plus others. They are open source, of course, so anyone can download those and tweak them and use them. And they wrote in Aitana on a sunny day enjoying so-and-so in the park. Pressed to go. I mean, they went up to Park World and it was very famous in Barcelona. Yeah, very picturesque already. But the software made about 25 different variations of Aitana in that position. And if we want, we can do a simple prompt now, put Aitana, and then...

complement all the prompt with more things like the clothes, the acting. Different poses, different outfits. At one point, for some reason, it put a leather hat on her head and the team started laughing because they were like, oh, Aitana would never wear that.

Aitana will never wear this, for example. Right, that's what we're saying. So it's funny because it's like, wow, I would love her to wear this, but she will not wear this. Which made me laugh because, of course, she doesn't exist. There are other advantages, I suppose, to Aitana. She never gets tired. True, never moans. They can work her 24-7. I mean, what else do they say about the benefits of having Aitana rather than a real person?

Well, that's the one they always come back to is the fact that they are fully in control of this person. They can run her ragged because she doesn't exist. But I think there's also an element here of the novelty factor, because there are some brands out there who know that Aitana is AI, know that she's got this almost iconic background of how she created and how she's become so famous. We should say as well, she's got 335,000 followers on Instagram. So she is

as far as I could find, the most popular, this new wave of realistic looking models. So there's the novelty element, but there's also the fact that she looks how she looks, that are really getting people excited. And she's done a lot of brand deals. They reckon they make thousands of dollars a month through advertising and sponsorship with her. The best they've done is 10,000 a month.

So we've looked at influencer culture and how recent AI developments have transformed this industry. Next, I want to look at the ethical considerations surrounding AI models like Aitana and the future of these digital celebrities as the pressure for perfection intensifies online.

Available now on The Documentary from the BBC World Service, Stephen Coates takes you to the Morse Code World Championships. In an internet-connected world, Morse Code, the alphabet of dots and dashes, might now feel from a different era. I'm meeting some of the people who are keeping the code alive. Morse Code, ready to transmit. Listen now by searching The Documentary, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

You're listening to The Global Story from the BBC World Service. There's a fresh episode available as a podcast each weekday. Just search for The Global Story wherever you get your podcasts. With me is Jo Tidey.

Joe, Aitana, when you look at her, many people would say she's perfect. Is there a sense that AI influencers like Aitana are setting really unrealistic beauty standards? 100%, yeah. I think if you look at the pictures of Aitana, and it has to be said there are others like her out there that are AI-generated influencers.

models and influencers, they're all very sexualised. They're all very slim women with big breasts and they all act and look in certain sort of coquettish ways. There is very much a male gaze running through this kind of

art or culture, whatever you want to call it. And there are some pretty heavy critics about this because, of course, already with influencers, we see perfect lives, particularly Instagram, being displayed to us. People are super slim. They use very clever lighting to make themselves look even better.

or angles, you know, and then you have this extra level that's now coming in of artificially generated women who are looking an unattainable level of traditional attractiveness. I see huge issues with the rise of AM models and influencers. I think they're setting an unrealistic beauty standard that is close enough to being real that a lot of people who follow them don't realise they're not real, especially teenagers, young teen girls. But then the...

That perfection is so unachievable because it isn't real. That is something like none of us can ever reach. Have they tried to create an artificially generated woman who is more realistic? They said they have, because the two things that this agency in particular does is they do Itana, which is an influencer, brand sponsorship deals, that kind of thing. But they also do bespoke AI creations for brands. And they said to me that they have tried to do kind of more curvy models, for example, or different diverse looks.

But really, according to them, the advertisers only want the traditional Hollywood-style woman because that's what gets the most eyeballs. In the beginning, we tried to make more curvy models, for example, or more not standardized models. And clients didn't like that. They usually want like a perfect model. But you can see this everywhere in public cities.

They have said they're now experimenting. They've built some men, some male AI influencers. I was about to ask, anyone on the scene? Yeah, well, no one wants them. No one's interested. They haven't released any as influencers, but they have released some as kind of models that they could put on different advertising campaigns. And according to them, no one wants that. There have been a few occasions, Joe, where online content created with AI has not been signposted correctly.

Are they obliged, these influencer accounts, these AI influencer accounts, to declare that they're enhanced or even who is behind them? Yes, it has to be labelled in some way saying AI generated. That's according to Instagram's terms and conditions. And all the ones that I found when I was researching this story, they do, they are open about that in the profile.

not at the top, perhaps. It'll say, influencer from Chicago, interested in this, this, this, and this, AI generated at the bottom. And that's even worse when you look at the pictures, because of course, there's normally a caption to go with the pictures, and then right at the bottom, it'll say, this is AI generated. So I think,

Potentially there is an issue there because, of course, most people don't look at the profile of a picture that pops up on their For You page, for example, or their algorithmically generated suggestions of what you might be interested in. They'll just scroll through it. And I think even if they are labelled, there are some people that haven't really understood that or they haven't read that. Because if you look at the comments on some of Aitana's pictures, for example, they say things like,

"Wow, I wish I had your body." "Watch your gym routine." That kind of thing. And I don't think it helps when Aitana does posts about being in the gym and working out. And "Great workout in the gym today." "This is the nutrition brand that I use." Or "These are the sports equipments that I have in the gym." This all kind of perpetuates the myth surrounding Aitana as being a real person that works hard in the gym, watches what she eats and looks like she does really.

Aitana though is controlled, but are we going to get to a point where these AI generated influences are going to become more autonomous and actually create content without that kind of human input or control?

Quite possibly. I think the whole point of having an AI influencer under the control of a person or a studio is that you can control them and that you can do anything with that character to make money for yourself. So I think there will be a little bit of a point in which the automation becomes a problem. So right now, yes, you could make a chatbot, for example.

You could talk to Aitana for days if you want to, and that could be a good idea for fans, for example. But then you wouldn't want her to say something wrong or do something wrong which affects her image because this is all about image. That's all it is. It is very superficial and it's all just about how you can use an image of someone that doesn't exist to make money. That will then raise the question, though, who is ultimately going to be accountable for the content?

Yeah, and that is a conversation we will no doubt be having in a few years' time. My mind just drifted off to another story that I've been doing recently about an AI chatbot that was created to keep scam callers on the line for as long as possible. Oh, isn't that lovely? A survey, you say? I'd be delighted to help, dear.

Give me a moment, though. My hearing is not what it used to be, so I might need you to repeat things now and then. And that is completely automated. So they just trust that that AI that's pretending to be a sort of doddery, confused old lady is not going to go off script too much and say something silly. The stakes are very low there because this is an organisation that's trying to annoy some criminals. It doesn't matter if this AI says something silly. But if you've got AI influencer that's gone off the rails a bit,

That is a potential problem. Is Aitana and other characters like her the precursor to not just what you've described in terms of the scanning, but just the more widespread use of AI models in other industries? Thinking about one of the jobs that I do as a BBC news presenter, am I about to be replaced? Have you heard of Notebook LM? No. This is a massive thing that's sort of gone viral recently. Google has created a new AI system whereby you can put whatever information you want into it automatically.

And then it will read you a 10 minute, 20 minute, half an hour podcast with two fake people, two Americans. And they're having a very, very lifelike chat about the topic. So people are using it for their research. If you're, for example, you're doing a paper on photosynthesis and you're down the gym, you don't want to read that. Put it into the notebook LM and you can hear two fake AI creations having a chat about your paper. All right. So you've been asking about this whole brain rewiring thing.

and how to actually use it to get stuff done. Not just like the feel good stuff, but real change, you know? Exactly. No sugarcoating today. We're going deep on this. Straight from Bob Doyle's Evolve Your Excellence handbook. Stuff he usually reserves for his paying clients, but we're giving you that inside track. Love it. No fluff, just straight to the good stuff.

We're racing towards a very synthetic future when it comes to media. I think that people know that influencers on Instagram, they are projecting a perfection anyway without AI. Even, for example, do you know some of these pictures that you see of quite rich people in private jets? They might not be on a private jet because you can hire a private jet that doesn't leave the airport and just take pictures of yourself inside a private jet for clout, you know. So there's already a real layer of

fakeness to social media. So some people would argue, is AI much of a leap on from that? And that is the argument from the Clueless Agency. They will say, well, if you compare Aitana to other influencers, she's the same as the rest. At the end of the day, she's an influencer, but comparing her to the rest of the influencers, she looks the same as the rest. I believe that we

We are here to stay and AI technology is here to stay as well. So in a way, we have to combine and hold hands and see if we can do it together. For so many people listening, this is all actually quite worrying. Does it also mean that we can expect some other regulatory action to be taken by governments? Or how would that work? Or what would that look like, Jo?

I think it would be really difficult because you could argue this is art. You could argue this is using computers to create art in the same way that a portrait photographer would do that. I suppose what we're seeing already is social networks getting on the front foot and trying to do something. So they've written in the last few years, if this is AI generated, you'd need to label it. Whether or not they're enforcing those rules...

I'm not sure. As I mentioned, the ones that I found were labelled but kind of in the smallest way possible. The way that governments are going, particularly in the UK and in the EU and in the US, we are seeing a drive to try and protect children online. So if there was any legislation brought in, I imagine it would be something like that. So for example, you would have no AI influencers on the feeds of children, something like that.

but so hard to police. So from what you've seen in your experiences in Barcelona, where is all this headed, Joe? What I found really interesting when I was in Barcelona with the Clueless Agency is what they're working on right now is a project that is very, very 2024. They are trying to come up with the face for the AI in-car voice assistant for a major car company. And they've called it Eileen because everything they do has an AI in it.

Hi, my name is Aileen and I'm the new virtual assistant of Audi Q6 e-tron. You will find it strange because virtual assistants have always been just a voice. Until now.

It just strikes me as something that is inevitable because we're talking to AI now by voice assistants all the time. It's going to increase. I'm not just talking obviously about Alexa or Siri or Hey Google. It's going to go on and on and on. And we are going to want to humanify these robots and these machines. So that was quite an interesting point. And I can see that happening a lot more. The other thing they're doing, which is potentially interesting and exciting for them, is they've created another AI influencer because ITAN has been so successful.

who is less sexualised. Again, it's a young woman, but she's got a blonde buzz cut and she is a musician. As well as the pictures and the stories, they're adding music as well, because, of course, music is now very much up for grabs when it comes to generative AI. So that's something I could see going quite fast in that direction, because I think if you're a commercial entity, you're looking beyond music.

the influencer sponsorships and the brand deals, you're looking at appearances. And if you think about some of the appearances music-wise we've had in the last few years, for example, with ABBA. During a five-week recording session with 160 cameras, they had to wear special suits with digital devices to capture every movement.

The performances today will be edited with their faces of yesterday. You've seen the ABBA show they're doing. Voyage, yeah. Yeah, Voyage, where they have holograms. Holograms, yeah. Why not do that if you're an influencer agency and you're trying to branch out and get into different industries? I can see that happening. If you had a group of teenagers here with us right now, what would be your best piece of advice to them around how they're using AI and what they're consuming?

I suppose there's two different things there. What you're consuming, I think, is really important to know what's real and what's fake. The easy way in this example would just be to read to the bottom of the captions because it would normally be labelled. Go to the profile and check. Have you seen a teenager scroll, though, on their phone? Yes, I've seen me scroll as well. Stopping to read the captions. Exactly, yeah, exactly. Whereas in terms of the other question of what they could be doing, I think it's very exciting. I think if you're a teenager...

It's way beyond what it used to be. So when I was at university, Facebook was just starting. And, you know, the idea of being an influencer in some way, yeah, there were bloggers out there, but no one was making serious money or having an entire career where you can fill out arenas and stuff just from social networks. But that is there now.

And when you've got AI on your side as well, if you use it responsibly, you can do some pretty amazing things. I don't think we should be scared of AI. I think that we should work out how to use it responsibly. Joe, thank you. I hope we see each other again. The real people. Real people. And yeah, I'm not out of a job very soon because of the AI generated newsreader. Thanks, Joe. Thanks.

And thanks so much to you for listening. If you want to get in touch, email us at theglobalstory at bbc.com. Send us a message or a voice note on WhatsApp. All of those details are in our show notes. Wherever you're listening in the world, this has been The Global Story. Thanks for having us in your headphones. Goodbye.

Available now on The Documentary from the BBC World Service, Stephen Coates takes you to the Morse Code World Championships. In an internet-connected world, Morse Code, the alphabet of dots and dashes, might now feel from a different era. I'm meeting some of the people who are keeping the code alive. Morse Code, ready to transmit. Listen now by searching The Documentary, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.