AI influencers are missing the one thing companies hire human influencers for

• AI-generated influencers are popping up on Instagram, TikTok, and more.
• Some brands have even paid them to post about their products.
• These influencers might offer a cheaper way to promote products, but they lack authenticity.

Alix Earle is a top influencer in part because she is incredibly beautiful. This is purely objective fact. Indeed, to prove it, I asked an AI chatbot of Albert Einstein — and he agreed.

But just being conventionally attractive isn't why Alix Earle — who has more than 6.3 million followers on TikTok — became an overnight sensation on social media. There are many good-looking women out there. But there's something distinctly compelling about Earle, something undeniably relatable. We want to see what clothes or makeup she chooses not just because she looks good, but because her charisma and personality have made us trust her opinions.

The rise of AI-generated influencers as a potential threat to the livelihood of human influencers is an interesting scenario to imagine. But that theory misses the key element that makes human influencers able to influence us in the first place: authenticity.

A few years ago, Lil Miquela, an early AI-generated influencer meant to look like a "fashionable young woman" took off on Instagram and even landed some brand deals. There was a flurry of interest in it, but mainly from those gawking at the novelty. It was a one-note joke: It was interesting only because it existed.

With leaps in improved AI generative technology, a handful of other AI influencers have since cropped up. Many appear designed to mimic the concept of "hot woman." At least one has made a few brand deals.

In New York Magazine, John Herrman pours some cold water on how truly effective AI influencers are. The FT reported that an H&M ad starring Kuki, a cartoonish AI model, was viewed as successful because it had higher than average "recall" (meaning people remembered seeing the ad):

This makes for an odd new sort of advertisement that you might be likely to "recall"  for no other reason than not having seen such a thing before. It also situates virtual influencers less as a replacement for human influencers than as a new trick for juicing certain campaign metrics.

But imagining that an AI influencer is capable of generating cheap images of someone hawking a product misses what actually makes influencer marketing effective.

Do you need a real-life person wearing a pair of pants to sell those pants? Absolutely not. Mannequins often don't even have heads. Models — professionals who are paid to wear clothes relatively anonymously — also exist and have proven quite effective at selling clothing. In fact, you don't even need human images involved. The J. Peterman catalog has been successfully selling paisley velvet dresses and leather jackets for decades using only drawings of the clothing.

What brands are after when they pay an influencer to wear their clothes or talk about their face cream is the leverage and power — literally, the influence — that creator has over their audience's purchasing decisions. And an influencer's authenticity is one of the biggest drivers of that power, according to a study published just this week in the journal Nature.

Merely feeding "sexy woman smiling jeans pink hair city background" into Midjourney isn't going to create a successful Instagram influencer who will convince masses of people to buy products.

It might be able to generate a different revenue stream, however. Aitana, an AI influencer with over 200,000 followers on Instagram, also has an account on Fanvue, where for $7.50 a month, you can pay to access images of her with lingerie and bare nipple showing. Fanvue, unlike competitor OnlyFans, has embraced AI models and creators on its platform.

The work of adult content creators is arguably harder than that of someone who merely posts outfits to Instagram. But it's possible that adult content labor is more easily replaced by AI simply because the customer is less discerning. On Aitana's Instagram, for example, many recent comments appear to be from men who are apparently unaware she isn't real.