Virtual influencers are attracting more and more followers. Why do people create fake influencers using AI or mixed reality? And how can you spot if an influencer is real or fake?
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00:00 They can make thousands of euros with ads for brands like L'Oreal, BMW or Karl Lagerfeld.
00:05 They have hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok.
00:10 But who are they actually?
00:11 Not real people.
00:12 They are digitally created characters.
00:15 To the untrained eye, they actually do look like real people.
00:18 And the number of those kinds of AI influences has been growing
00:23 quite significantly over the last year or so.
00:25 As it gets harder, this line between real and fake, what is the type of transparency we require?
00:33 So we want the quality to be that people are not able to tell if it's real or not,
00:38 but we want to disclose that this character is virtual.
00:42 I'm sure no matter how hard we try, there's people who might look at some of the images
00:45 that we create and think, wow, that's a real person or that's a real model.
00:50 In this video, we want to give you some insights into digital influences.
00:55 How are they generated?
00:56 What's their creator's goal?
00:58 How much money do they make?
00:59 And how can you distinguish between real influences and virtual models?
01:04 Many models are created with the help of artificial intelligence or mixed reality,
01:08 which means that real content is mixed with virtual content.
01:12 Virtual influences like Lil Miquela or Kyra are created with 3D modeling,
01:16 which is also used for computer games.
01:19 So it can take three, four days to create a single image, anywhere from one to three,
01:23 four days, and can take seven to 10 days to create a video of 30 seconds.
01:27 Sometimes it's really difficult to tell if they are real or fake,
01:30 as comments on social media show.
01:32 Many people believe that these influencers and models are real people.
01:36 And that's fooled lots and lots of different people.
01:39 That's fooled celebrities.
01:40 One example is Emily Pellegrini, whose account is not as close as AI or virtual.
01:45 In her posts and stories, she acts like a real person who is traveling or going out,
01:50 for example.
01:50 Her creator told the British tabloid Daily Mail
01:53 that many famous or rich people contact the account.
01:56 They think she's real.
01:57 They invite her to Dubai to meet and eat at great restaurants.
02:01 But she's not real.
02:03 Let's have a closer look.
02:04 This video has thousands of likes.
02:06 Some users comment that the body belongs to Ella Cerveto, a real model.
02:11 In fact, we did find the video almost a year before on Ella Cerveto's Instagram.
02:16 If you compare them, you see that just the face was swapped,
02:20 a technique we will explain later in this video.
02:22 You can find these fake influencers and models on several platforms,
02:26 from Instagram, X and TikTok,
02:28 platforms promoting sexualized content,
02:31 to business networks such as LinkedIn.
02:33 They are everywhere.
02:35 And actually, everyone and anyone can create them.
02:38 What's different right now is how these interfaces or software make it really simple
02:43 for someone who doesn't have technical literacy
02:46 to just use natural language and create.
02:49 Yes, it's really easy to generate AI humans.
02:52 We tried it out in the DW fact-checking team
02:55 and had some, I'd say, pretty realistic results.
02:58 Some people create AI images for fun.
03:01 Others generate money with it.
03:02 The clueless, the AI model agency behind Aitana López and Maya Lima,
03:07 told us that they generate approximately 8,000 euros profit a month.
03:12 Others probably generate even more money with their ad partners.
03:15 So it really, really depends.
03:17 It's very, very similar to the kind of money that real influencers are making.
03:22 And as you can imagine, some real influencers are making a lot of money.
03:25 The fashion brand H&M and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook,
03:31 found that ads with virtual creator contents are really successful.
03:35 The brand H&M noted that users remember ads with a mix of virtual creator content
03:40 and campaign videos 11 times more often than without virtual creator content.
03:46 Given this success, advertisements with virtual creator content
03:51 can be way cheaper than ads with real models.
03:54 While professional agencies creating digital models
03:57 mostly tell their audience that these are not real people,
04:00 other creators don't disclose that fact.
04:03 But how can we actually spot fake influencers and models?
04:07 Here are five tips.
04:08 First, check out the profile of the character.
04:11 In many postings, virtual influencers are not transparent about being digitally created.
04:17 But sometimes their creators disclose that fact in their bio.
04:20 Sometimes they also use hashtags.
04:23 At the moment, we're using hashtags to let people know that our characters are virtual influencers
04:28 or if an image is generated by AI.
04:31 I would hope that in the future, Instagram would actually develop something
04:35 where we could tag something as AI or a virtual influencer.
04:39 You can also check the comments to see if other people tell you
04:42 that the character you see is actually not a real person.
04:45 Second, look carefully at the influencers' images.
04:48 Very often, fake influencers look flawless and unrealistic.
04:53 The skin is just too perfect.
04:55 There's often this kind of almost plasticky quality to a lot of the images.
04:59 If you compare several images on the account,
05:02 you can also spot inconsistencies like here.
05:05 On some images, the woman has a lot of moles.
05:08 On others, she doesn't have any.
05:09 Third, is the content in the profile sexualized?
05:13 When it comes to some body parts, some fake influencers can have unrealistic proportions.
05:18 They can be super toned, muscular, or have really big boobs and butts.
05:22 Fourth, check out the video content.
05:25 Real influencers often post videos.
05:28 AI-generated ones often use images because they tend to look more realistic
05:32 than AI-generated videos.
05:34 If they publish videos, some virtual influencers resemble robots and dolls.
05:38 Their face and body movements can look artificial, as in this case.
05:42 But some of the fake videos are more realistic if the creators use deepfake technologies.
05:47 For example, they use videos of real people and just swap faces.
05:52 And that is getting, again, very, very good, very realistic.
05:56 But sometimes you can see some areas where, for example, the facial mask,
06:00 that is a face that's being swapped onto the other person's head,
06:03 isn't perfectly aligned, particularly if they're doing things such as turning their head.
06:08 Remember Emily Pellegrini?
06:10 To find out whether a video is a deepfake,
06:12 you can take a screenshot of the clip and upload it in Google Lens, for example.
06:16 That's how you can try to find the original clip.
06:19 And see if it's been face-swapped.
06:21 But keep in mind, if you don't find a result,
06:24 it doesn't necessarily prove that the content is genuine.
06:27 Fifth, look at the background.
06:29 It may be repetitive or look blurry and unreal.
06:33 Also, the background may have other inconsistencies.
06:35 For example, if there were books on a shelf,
06:38 maybe the text on the spine of the book wouldn't really make sense.
06:41 Here's another example.
06:43 Have a look at the soccer goal net, which looks really distorted.
06:46 Also, you may find AI detectors on the internet.
06:49 But from our experience, they are not really reliable.
06:52 Those systems are not perfect.
06:55 They can't tell you with certainty if something is AI-generated.
06:59 And they often market themselves as being really good when they're not.
07:03 These five tips will help you to spot whether an influencer or model is real or digitally created.
07:09 Still, the lines are often blurred.
07:12 Just be aware that even real human influencers you've been following for many years are using AI.
07:20 And to not just think of it as this binary between AI influencer and human influencer,
07:26 but there's kind of this augmented middle ground where AI is all around us.
07:32 So, virtual influencers are all around us.
07:35 What do you think of them?
07:36 Have you come across any influencers or models where you don't know whether they are real or fake?
07:41 You can text us at factchecking@dw.com.
07:43 [Music]