You don’t need to be a model to land a brand deal. You don’t need to step onstage to post a stand-up clip. And in the AI influencer business, the person attracting all that attention doesn’t even need to exist.
If you haven’t encountered one yet, an AI influencer is a character whose images or videos are created using artificial intelligence. A person or company gives it a face, a name, and a social media account, then posts as that character. It might appear to be a model, a lifestyle creator, or a stand-up comedian, with followers who can be directed toward brand promotions, products, or paid subscriptions.
The pitch is that you can do all this without getting in front of a camera. With tools that put AI characters into existing footage, you may not even need to film anything.
The people promoting the opportunity aren’t being especially subtle. "this is like ecom in 2016," one post declares, comparing it to an early opportunity in online retail. "these AI characters have gotten 100M+ views in only the last couple of days," he adds, "making them is SO easy it feels unfair." Another promises a "you can do it in 5min," ending with "hope you get millions of views with this one."
A growing industry supports all of this, from AI platforms that generate faces and voices to agencies managing fictional talent and people selling courses on how to get started. Here's how AI influencers are made, how they make money, and why real creators are pushing back.
How do you make an AI creator?
The tutorials circulating on social media break the process into a few steps. First, decide what your character looks like. Some recommend browsing Pinterest for inspiration and using ChatGPT or Claude to help develop the character. Next, make a "character sheet": a set of reference images showing the same fictional person from different angles. Those images give the video tool a guide to the character’s appearance.
Then, users bring those images into a tool such as Higgsfield’s Genjutsu, along with a video they want the character to appear in. Several promotional posts recommend downloading a viral video and keeping its movement, lighting, framing, and overall appearance while swapping out the performer. A sample prompt is:
"replace the person in @ video1 with the character from @ image1. keep the same motion, camera movement, color grading, lighting, framing, and overall video quality."
Another (seemingly sponsored) tutorial recommends using luxury lifestyle footage to make a character appear wealthy. "while everyone was busy making bizarre AI characters, this creator found a MUCH bigger angle. he made poor person look filthy RICH." The post added that "he grew this account to 280K+ followers in just two days posting multiple times a day."
Not everyone suggests that users should take someone else’s video. "Shoot on your phone, Genjutsu does the production: wardrobe, set, grade," Higgsfield says on its website. In that approach, you film yourself performing the movements, then use the tool to transfer them to your fictional character. The platform's AI Influencer builder allows users to choose features including age, ethnicity, hairstyle, and body proportions. A similar platform, HeyGen, offers talking AI avatars — digital characters that appear to speak on camera — while ElevenLabs supplies AI-generated speech. Together, these services let an account’s operator create the appearance of a person who can pose, move, and talk, without that person existing at all.
Over the past few years, but especially in recent weeks, these sort of accounts have gone viral, particularly in the sketch and stand up comedy spaces. Popular creators include Abu Shalab, Leopold Delarue, Jean Phil, and Percival Ashcroft.
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The business extends into beauty, fashion, and fitness, too. Examples include imma, a Japanese virtual influencer featured in an SK-II skincare ad, Shudu, a digital model who appeared in Balmain’s "Virtual Army," Hazel Delarose, who posts dating and GRWM content, and Lil Miquela, whose fictional life has included starring in a BMW campaign (she also has 2.2 million followers).
How does a fictional person make real money?
An AI influencer can attract millions of views, but those views don’t come with a fixed paycheck. The person running the account can earn through platform payments, brand deals, or selling something to the audience.
On YouTube, the platform pays eligible creators a share of advertising revenue through its Partner Program; for Shorts, YouTube pools revenue from ads shown between clips and allocates money based on each creator’s share of eligible engaged views. AI-generated videos can qualify, but channels must join the program and meet its originality requirements. YouTube specifically lists "AI-generated content made with generic or unoriginal templates giving the impression of mass production without adding the creator’s original, authentic insights or perspective" as ineligible for monetization.
TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program, on the other hand, pays eligible creators for original, high-quality videos longer than one minute — but on that platform, along with Instagram, it's more likely that an AI clip could attract millions of views without earning anything. That's why, according to one post, "views alone pay little, the money is in what you put behind." That's why for some accounts, free videos are advertisements for paid subscriptions. Profile links send viewers to NSFW-subscription platforms like OnlyFans or Fanvue to purchase additional content. Fanvue, which explicitly welcomes AI creators, offers subscriptions, paid posts and messages, and tips.
Many of these influencers sell courses or guides on how to make this sort of content. For example, Aitana López, an AI fitness and lifestyle personality who has more than 400,000 Instagram followers and 1,000 YouTube subscribers, sells instructions to followers on how to create characters like her. Aitana’s Instagram links to AI community platform skool.com's AI Creator Aicademy, whose page promises: "Learn how to build, position, and monetize a profitable AI avatar through strategy, structure, and systems." The community lists a $9 monthly price and lessons on making AI content, developing advertising campaigns, and automating production.
"AI stole my joke and outfit"
A recent case of a viral AI comedian shows what can happen when that strategy relies on a real creator’s work.
"Tiffany Sloane," posting on Instagram as @tiffany.bbyx, has about 377,000 followers and 118 posts (as of Oct. 6). Its earliest post appeared on Sept. 11, less than a month ago. Since then, Tiffany's AI has appeared in generated sitcom episodes and stand-up clips. Videos get a range of 10,000 views to millions. The profile describes Tiffany as an actress and discloses that she is AI generated (a change that developed while writing this story). Its Instagram highlights link to Tiffany's OnlyFans page, with a bio that reads "19, and yeah, the body’s real." Who operates that page, and whether it features a real woman, remains unconfirmed, and the Instagram account's page has since been seemingly deactivated.
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Of course, since Tiffany is not a real person, she also did not come up with the joke, or the mannerisms behind her character on stage. In an Oct. 4 Instagram video, comedian George Brett Olsen shared a side-by-side comparison showing himself and Tiffany wearing similar outfits, gestures, and telling the same joke. "AI stole my joke and outfit!" he declared.
"What’s crazy to me is you can’t report this. A bunch of people tried," Olson added. "This account has 300k followers, counting, and just full send stealing jokes from comics. What’s more, it’s scary that it’s either bots commenting, people who don’t know the difference or just don’t care. Also they screwed up my punchline."
A concerning aspect is how many people genuinely take the account seriously. Before all her videos were taken down, there were comments on posts like "she's the funniest!" and "When do you do live shows?" Though most people can see through the facade. "Ew. This thing gets follows for stealing jokes?? Who wants to see this?" Venture capital partner Justine Moore even posted on X that the tactic was a "genius marketing hack."
Other comedians have encountered the same problem as Olson. AI performer @aylenskye3000 delivered a joke by comedian Olivia Carter in a (now deleted) video about asking out her personal trainer — material the comedian had performed on Netflix and The Tonight Show. According to Carter, via Gizmodo, initially she couldn’t see one of the copied videos herself because the account had blocked her. Jokes by comedians Sarah Purdum and Julia Jasunas were also identified on the same bot account that connects to a Fanvue profile with close to 5,000 likes.
Purdum told Mashable she knew of one instance involving her own work, but that the comedy community had been discussing similar experiences, particularly among women. "It seems to be that female comedians work is being stolen and repurposed for sexy AI models," she said. "I feel annoyed that my work is being taken for the purpose of drawing in men, although I think the models could say anything and it would mean the same to a man that is there for unrealistic bodies."
Purdum has a point: The AI women in these vides have exaggerated breasts and hips, tiny waists, and practically painted-on clothing. Serving a sexualized image attracts attention that can be directed toward paid subscriptions on platforms — or just to get views. Along the way, they put real women up against bodies designed to grab eyeballs, potentially feeding insecurities about how women are supposed to look. Sara Ziff, founder and executive director of the Model Alliance, warned that using AI to create idealized people who don’t exist risks "narrowing our definition of beauty instead of broadening it," according to the New York Times.
"I would hope platforms would take down work that has been plagiarized," she added. Mashable has reached out to Instagram and TikTok for comments.
There are real agencies for fake people
Beyond accounts repackaging viral videos, more and more companies are starting to build fictional personalities specifically for advertising and entertainment. Think of a talent agency where the agency also designs the talent. For example, The Clueless manages López, describing her as, "Born in Barcelona and 26 years old," with a "sporty style and a bold attitude." The fictional creator has appeared in an Amazon Black Friday campaign, and according to the agency, works with brands like L’Oréal and Coca-Cola.
Other companies have developed entire casts of fictional personalities. Inception Point AI’s roster has more than 100 characters covering subjects including gardening, cooking, and celebrity gossip, and are designed to host podcasts, appear in videos, and interact with followers.
As CEO Jeanine Wright told the Times in August, "As long as people like the content, we think they’ll accept that it comes from A.I.." Andreea Petrescu, who co-founded AI marketing agency Seraphinne Vallora, addded that: "With A.I., it’s like a clean slate: You can design it the way you want, she can be as gorgeous as you want, and she’s all yours."
"With A.I., it’s like a clean slate: You can design it the way you want, she can be as gorgeous as you want, and she’s all yours."
Platforms have rules addressing parts of this. Fanvue permits AI content but prohibits deception and infringement of ownership rights, while OnlyFans requires it to clearly feature the verified creator and be identifiable as AI. Meta applies "AI info" labels, and TikTok introduced a similar AI-labeling tool back in 2023, and YouTube began rolling out its disclosure tool in 2024, with updates this past May. All of these require disclosures of realistic synthetic content, but a label doesn’t establish where the original performance came from or whether its creator agreed to its reuse in the first place.
TikTok prohibits certain synthetic depictions even when labeled, including likenesses of anyone under 18 and those of adult private individuals used without permission. In August, a source at TikTok told Mashable the company was testing certain AI tools like "AI Cast," which helps users create an "AI Self" that can appear in AI-generated videos. In response to various influencers and musician's content getting ripped off, the platform said, "We are testing strategies broadly to help protect AI likeness on the platform." YouTube, meanwhile, clarified in July 2025 that repetitive or mass-produced content cannot earn money through its Partner Program.
Getting noticed in an already crowded entertainment and influencer economy is hard enough. But in an ecosystem where a stranger can put a new face on your performance and use it to build their own following, creators are now also left competing with a version of their own work.
