A new generation of influencers is emerging on social networks. They promote products, interact with their subscribers, participate in events but are not human: they are artificial intelligences.
More and more accounts – sometimes followed by tens of thousands of people – feature characters who appear larger than life, but who are only avatars created by artificial intelligence.
In France, Anne Kerdi is the most striking example. On Instagram, since March 2023, she has been promoting Brittany, writing the texts under her publications herself, generating her videos and even responding to comments from some of her 11,000 subscribers.
Anne Kerdi receives private messages regularly. Its creator, Sébastien, 37, is the head of a company specializing in AI in Brest: “At first, even I found it surprising. She gets ‘Hello, how are you?’ So, well… Anne is a robot, she has nothing to say about herself. She is neither good nor bad, it’s like talking to her calculator. She sometimes responds with humor to ‘Have a good weekend. end’, ‘Good night’, etc. that she receives. I specify that her subscribers know very well that it is an AI. Do they play it or not? But indeed, there. has people who have created connections.”
Subscribers know that Anne Kerdi is a character, a question of ethics to which Sébastien says he is very attached: “THE The goal is really not to deceive anyone. On the contrary, it’s really about being as transparent as possible: crediting the authors of the photos, adding the mention ‘artificial intelligence’ and, the two or three times it happened, mentioning the paid partnerships.”
Anne Kerdi has many partnerships. Mostly unpaid: “It turns out she was asked to be an ambassador for an endowment fund for ocean conservation. She is also a member of a Breton artistic cultural committee. She has been invited to various events where she appears on video to give her opinion.”
“And I insist, it’s really her opinion, sometimes I don’t agree with her. It’s not me who tells her to say what I want.”
Sébastien, creator of the AI influencer Anne Kerdiat franceinfo
An opinion that the software composes, but that Sébastien systematically checks, again for ethical reasons: “For me, it’s essential. She’s the one who responds, she’s the one who writes, but I control everything she says because the AI makes mistakes, errors in her texts, can misinform. So, I check each time on her posts, I check that they are reliable sources and if what she says is true, if the dates are correct, etc. If I see that she has either made mistakes or omitted something. detail that I consider important, I tell her to insert it or else she completely redoes her text to reformulate it differently.”
Anne Kerdi is pretty, is a woman, but without any intention of attracting Internet users, assures Sébastien: “When I worked on Anne’s generation with the software, I came to the observation that a male face is more fixed than a female face. After two, three, four, five generations, it was this face who was coming back.”
Sébastien’s only criterion was an age range of 25-30 years: “So that Anne does not become a student and that she does not become a mother either. Because I wanted to avoid questions – which arose despite everything – about knowing if Anne will have a lover, if she will have children etc. That’s not the principle at all. For me a machine doesn’t have feelings so it doesn’t have children either.” For the moment, Anne Kerdi does not directly bring money to her creator. Within a few days, she will have her own website as a versatile regional assistant to help tourists organize their stay in Brittany.
Sébastien has been contacted by several influencer agencies without responding to the requests for the moment. The world of influence is increasingly relying on AI to develop its activities. But according to Ruben Cohen, director of the Follow agency in Paris, it is unlikely to imagine that AI will completely replace humans, for the moment: “An AI influencer is a character that is tailor-made – sometimes it’s even a digital work of art – but there is no experience, there is no feeling, it was created to capture, not to live.”
The Follow agency supports nearly 80 content creators – none of them generated by AI. And if they are successful, according to Ruben Cohen, it is precisely because their subscribers identify with them, that they are like them, that they are human, that they have an experience and faults : “The basis of influence is people. There The reason why today a brand goes towards influence and not towards TV with actors to make an ad is because there is a human element. There is a recommendation, there is an experience, there is an incarnation. Where with a robot, with an AI, it’s much more complicated.”
However, the founder of Follow confirms that he remains attentive to developments in this technology: “We cannot, in the sector in which we operate, turn a blind eye to AI. We must be very attentive because it will take up more and more space in the ecosystem. We must be the cutting edge and to keep a constant watch on everything that is happening.”
“It is certain that there will be changes, even upheavals.”
Ruben Cohen, founder of the Follow agencyat franceinfo
One of the advantages of AI could notably be that of saving time while the activity of influencer is particularly time-consuming: “The major advantage will be to counteract the time aspect. When a subscriber from New York sends a message to an influencer at 4 a.m., this influencer is asleep because she is a human. On the other hand, there is an AI behind it, indeed, there will be no time limit And that, indeed, would be a considerable advantage. There would be a huge gain in productivity because once you have spent the amount. behind this technology, we can think of enormous profitability.” It remains to be seen whether subscribers would agree to be “influenced” by computer-generated avatars.