🕶️ Virtual Influencers: Pseudonymity, Vtubers, Brand Mascots

In this Trends.vc Report, we talk about how to speak unlimited languages, how to create custom digital characters, pseudonymous personal brands and more.

💎 Why It Matters

Virtual influencers have unlimited time and speak unlimited languages.

They can produce endless content.

🔍 Problem

Human influencers make mistakes and have constraints.

💡 Solution

Virtual influencers remove key-person risk.

You can choose how they look, what they do and where they are.

🏁 Players

Virtual Influencers

Squeaky and Roy • Virtual ‘brothers’ of the D’Amelio family.
Beefluencer • The first bee influencer raising money to save the bees.
Body by Ralph • A fitness influencer that can’t take his own advice.
Lu do Magalu • The most followed virtual influencer in the world.

Virtual Influencer Tools

Alethea AI • Generates interactive AI Characters from a description in natural language.
VSeeFace • Free, highly configurable face and hand-tracking VRM.
Reface • Create realistic face swap videos, GIFs and memes with just one selfie.
Avatarify • Pick a song, apply it to your photo and share singing portraits.
Hologram Labs • Create and play with your ‘digital self’/virtual avatar.

🔮 Predictions

Human influencers will create virtual avatars to scale their time and reach.

Deceased singers from Whitney Houston to Frank Zappa have performed concerts with music holograms.

Luka Dončič created Luk.AI on his TikTok to give his fans an immersive and interactive experience.

Grimes’ virtual alter-ego goes by WarNymph. She’s in Beta.

Ariana Grande went on a virtual tour in Fortnite.

Fashion and skincare brands will use virtual models to sell their products. They are faster, cheaper and easier to work with.

AI Model Agency is an AI fashion agency that lets brands and models choose from a wide range of styles to create the perfect photo.

L’Oréal launched a ‘virtual idol’ in China named Mr. Ou. He’s a 24-year-old eco-activist who works in the fashion industry.

Metaverse Architects’ AI model agency offers scalable, customizable and highly accurate virtual models for brands.

Tiffany partnered with a virtual influencer AYAYI to model and promote its Knot Collection.

ASOS used a virtual model for its augmented reality catwalk.

Deep Agency lets you hire virtual models for your project.

Virtual influencers will participate in real-world events. They don’t need breaks and can perform in more than one place at a time.

Xinhua News is a Chinese media outlet that unveiled an AI news presenter who can cover news 24/7.

Miquela debuted a song at Lollapalooza. Her top song has 63 million listens on Spotify.

Jared Leto was interviewed by Fubuki on his press tour for Morbius.

Cinder appeared at SXSW as a host and mixologist.

☁️ Opportunities

Create AI-generated podcasts and videos with customized characters and voices.

Cherie Hu generated an audio version of her newsletter read aloud by an AI clone of her own voice.

Noah fed an AI his LinkedIn profile. It wrote and recorded an entire podcast for him in his own voice.

Ramsri created a personalized guided meditation generated entirely by AI.

Matt created an AI clone of himself so that he could conduct an interview.

CoffeeVectors generated voice acting entirely based on a written script.

Build a pseudonymous personal brand using virtual influencer technology like voice changers and VTuber skins.

Charlotte Fang is the pseudonym for the founder of Remilia. She plans to turn profile picture NFTs into avatars that can replace faces and bodies.

Pacman is the founder of Blur, a 1,400,000,000-dollar NFT marketplace. He uses a virtual avatar for podcasts and interviews.

CL207 live streams trading and podcasts with a cat character VTuber.

Build interactive experiences that let audiences interact with “you” whenever they want.

Serah Reikka’s audience can chat with her whenever they want via a Telegram bot.

Caryn Marjorie will be your virtual girlfriend for $1/minute on Snapchat. You can invest in her technology.

Raelice uses VTChaos to let Twitch Chat control his VTuber avatar in real time with chat commands.

🏔️ Risks

Lack of Authenticity • People demand authenticity and relatability from brands which virtual avatars may not have. TikTok requires virtual influencers to be tagged as such. Kyle Vorbach faked his luxury Instagram life with AI.
Anonymity • It can be hard to hold anonymous virtual influencers accountable for their business or ethics.

🔑 Key Lessons

You can minimize costs. Virtual influencers have minimal recurring production costs and can appear in many places at once.
Virtual influencers are easier to control. A human model might feel uncomfortable being used as a virtual assistant on your website. A virtual influencer won’t complain.

🔥 Hot Takes

Virtual influencers are not new. Mickey Mouse and Superman share many of the same qualities. They’re 100% controllable, can speak different languages and are “immortal”.
Humans and computers will become one. It will become near-impossible to distinguish between robots and humans on the internet.

😠 Haters

“We want to connect with real people. Human influencers are more effective at building emotional connections.”
While authentic human connection will always be valuable. Sometimes it may not fit your budget or schedule. This is when virtual influencers are a good option.

“Virtual influencers create a false sense of reality. They create distorted perceptions of what is possible or desirable for humans.”
Virtual influencers can be used for good or evil. If a creator has deceptive intentions, the virtual influencer will amplify that. Creators are responsible for what their virtual influencers say and do. Platforms are also responsible for holding creators accountable.

“Virtual influencers will be biased by default. If they are trained on unethical data, how can we teach them to be ethical?”
This is a valid concern. Systemic biases will affect how virtual influencers “think” and act. Creators need to make efforts to adjust for this societal flaw in their training data. This article says that virtual influencers will use their ability to mimic human influencers to exploit our emotions.

🔗 Links

Anyone played with Synthesia or D-ID yet? • The tweet behind this report.
Who is Virtual Music Artist and Dancer, Polar? • An interview with the creator behind viral virtual musician POLAR.
ElevenLabs AI Voice Cloning is the Future • A written guide to voice cloning and the ElevenLabs API.

📁 Related Reports

Personal Brands • You can scale your personal brand by being or creating virtual influencers.
Influencer Marketing • Virtual influencers unlock massive new opportunities for influencer marketing.
The Creator Economy • The creators behind virtual influencers are well-positioned to monetize their audiences.
Audience-First Products • Virtual influencers will build and sell products within their niche.
AI-Generated Content • Most virtual influencers rely on AI-generated content to scale their brand.

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