Why Are Companies Using Artificial Intelligent Influencers?

By: Eliana Ertsey

You're scrolling through Instagram and you stumble upon a hip girl showing off her new Prada bag. But, something isn’t right. She looks far too airbrushed to be real, but a little too real to be a robot. So, what is she? She is what you call an artificial intelligent influencer. Now, that's weird, right? To some seeing this almost real entity is uncomfortable, striking new emotions about having AI blasted all over their Instagram feeds. Social media influencers still seem so new but they aren't enough to keep up with how fast technology is improving. As users endlessly scroll on a multitude of platforms, companies are racing to find the best way to grapple with particular audiences. In order to find the perfect influencer, companies are beginning to use artificial intelligence.

Within the last two years, AI influencers have gained millions of followers, and are curated to reach the ideal audience. As our computers remember every search, listen to us speak, and seemingly know what we're thinking, so do companies. Massive brands pull information from our caches and utilize them in order to create the “perfect” influencer. As artificial intelligence is becoming more widespread, brands are using this to their advantage and moving online. Rather than opting for human brand endorsements, companies are switching to Artificial Intelligence. Companies see AI as a new venture promising them sociopolitical control, direct access to their perfect audience, as well as a new character they can audit at any time.

Artificial Influencers?

Artificial Intelligence is a complex system that is encoded using machine learning in order to simulate the way humans think. Essentially, something that is artificially intelligent is attempting to answer the question “can a machine think?” Scientists use different building blocks of the human thought process and mirror them to fit a computer's thought process to develop this highly intelligent system.

The importance of artificial intelligence lies in the fact that these computers make educated decisions for humans. AI systems are able to adapt and pull from analysis in order to create the best outcome for a specific problem. These systems use real-time data to create the best software by learning without relying fully on human intelligence. To understand how AI is being used in technology we can look at Instagram. Let’s say you save a post of someone playing football- the AI sees this as an interest and will then present you with more football-related content. Depending on your interaction with the content, it will create more specific posts or the AI will find another direction.

Furthermore, different social media platforms have seen the success of using AI to curate specific posts and are now switching to using Artificial Intelligence Influencers.

Artificially intelligent influencers are “[governed by a set of algorithm]s'' to promote products or games in place of human influencers. Although AI influencers are newly emerging, in this blog we will take a look at why companies are using AI as well as what reactions this elicits from customers.

How are Companies using AI influencers?

Brands on social media sway trends by having our idols promote them in everyday posts. With the desire for the perfect influencer, companies are now turning to computers to target their exact crowd and promote their product exactly how they please. Due to such technological advances, artificial intelligent influencers are able to find the target audience, collect necessary data on trends, and select ideal content for the brand.

You may be curious how a company can create the ideal influencer. It begins with insights taken from your personal online engagement. Data is mostly obtained through your recent searches and the trail left behind on your computer. AI databases collect this data in order to offer the most personal computer experience. Due to this personalization, consumers feel as if they are being “served by AI'' having this customized experience has inspired companies to move forward using this technology to also create a customized influencer.

The leverage a company holds when they create an AI influencer comes from the fact that the engineers and team create the initial code for the AI; they are able to implement any goals they feel they want the AI to accomplish. As of now, AI is not fully independent of its creators but, it may begin to get more advanced continually. AI influencers still have a team behind it coding its algorithms and perfecting them so it can target reach target audiences. As discussed by Ben Robinson , the appeal comes from the fact that everything can be completely controlled-including PR risk- which can be detrimental to a celebrity counterpart.

Just like using a human influencer, companies are taking the risk that as these algorithms become more independent they can produce similar transgressions as humans. Tested by Tomas and Fowler, it was found that an “AI influencer who commits a transgression negatively affects attitudes and intentions toward the brand.” This was concluded after using evidence from human interactions with AI. Throughout the experiment the humans were aware that they were interacting with AI yet, these AI were so realistic they felt as if they were interacting with just another human being. While this article alluded to the fact that since AI are so similar to humans it can detrimentally affect the company, it does not take into account that AI influencers are still being researched. Moreover, it lacks information regarding that the variability for the AI influencer to not produce transgressions becomes stronger as they continue to progress.

Furthermore, companies are keen on the fact that they can control the AI influencer's narrative and identity.

Meet Lil Miquela

An influencer by the name of Lil Miquela was created in 2018. Since her creation, she has partnered with Dior, and become the face of Pacsun. With over three million followers, countless comments and likes, Lil Miquela was considered one of Time’s “Most Influential People on the Internet” in 2018 yet she does not exist outside the realm of the internet. Created by Brud, an AI company whose purpose is to create stories using AI personas, little is known about exactly what Miquela is. There are questions about whether she is completely run by AI, or has back-end help from the Brud company. Although her background is kept secret she is held on the same platform as real influencers and can be tailored to the brand's specific needs.

As the creators of Miquela are trying to make her as realistic as possible, they have included that Miquela has her “own” political dialogue (which is programmed by engineers through the AI); this can be controversial. Frida Neri concludes that the creation of Lil Miquela is simply a neoliberal marketing scheme exploiting Black/Brown women through her posts and ambiguous features. Yet, Trevor McFedries, a Black male programmer and co-founder of Brud has defended his stance that Lil Miquela's purpose is to be as close to an activist as possible by speaking about the Black Lives Matter movement, reposting mutual aid collectives as well as creating posts about systemic racism. Brud also only accepts funding from venture capitalist firms with “black women in a position to write them a check.” Furthermore, the controversy lies in whether the company is trying to promote its stance or if Miquela can genuinely think for herself. But, the evidence points to the company using Miquela as a way to promote their political stance as she is not completely her own entity and still has programmers controlling her dialogue.

At this time, Miquela seems to be a way for the creators to push their ideologies but this will inevitably change in the future. As AI and Lil Miquela become independent it will be interesting to see if they will soon have the ability to control their own ideologies as well.

Consumer Reactions to AI Influencers

In order to sustain a successful business, you need a good base of followers. As companies are turning to artificial intelligence, people are now interacting with these influencers. It is important to know your audience especially when they have a “high need for uniqueness.” As examined in the paper Unreal Influence, an experiment was conducted that compared humans and AI in order to examine whether AI had similar interactions with human influencers. It was concluded that AI plays a similar role to humans but in the case that humans want more, the AI algorithm is very successful in creating exactly what that person seeks. Furthermore, creating a positive transaction between the consumer and AI influencer.

Although AI can elicit positive reactions, it can also leave people feeling confused and anxious about the AI influencers they come across. In a study by Park, it was proven that when users interacted with two or more artificial influencers they expressed feelings of anger and confusion. Even if they understand this person is fake, the emotions expressed by AI seem far too real. Albeit AI can be confusing at times it was proven that AI serves a bigger purpose for the consumer. As presented by Puntoni, AI makes consumers happy and they feel served by the AI. These AI influencers now serve the customer directly by being tailored to each person's interests and desires.

Overall, as AI influencers are still emerging people will be adjusting. It’s understandable that having an entity curated almost perfectly for your liking is otherworldly. However, the beauty lies in the fact that we get to curate who we want to see and what we want these AI influences to push.

Conclusion

Next time the ideal and seemingly perfect influencers pop up on your Instagram page, you will understand how they are so perfectly tailored to your liking. Whether you are stalking a luxury handbags website or in need of a new shirt, these non-real entities may be the ones to convince you to buy just that one thing.

Ultimately, AI will continue to advance and whether companies use it to their advantage is up to them. Although there is still much more to learn about AI, the future is promising and the data looks towards benefitting humans. AI is something we should not fear and, in fact, is something we can use to our advantage in order to make our social media consumption more pleasant. The beauty of AI lies in the fact that it lives up to everything we make of it and being that we are unique human beings, these influencers are uniquely curated just for us.

As research continues, we are learning more about the endless possibilities of using AI influencers and just how similar they are to humans. Whether companies prefer humans to AI, it is clear AI influencers have the same capacity in social media spaces as humans do.