What are AI influencers actually good for?

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AI influencers are having a bad year in the press. They've been blamed for eroding authenticity, undermining labour and tanking brand trust. Fashion brand Guess drew criticism after using an AI-generated model in a Vogue ad. Dove has sworn off AI models entirely. Brand partnerships dropped 30% in the first eight months of 2025, per Collabstr.

Yet behind the outrage, the adoption curve hasn't flattened. It's just changed shape. Qatar Airways launched an AI cabin crew member alongside Novak Djokovic without generating a headline. Vodafone's Raya outperformed human benchmarks in campaign testing.

"Any of the kudos that comes with the first brand to implement an AI influencer is over," says Lewis Davey, co-founder of Pixel — the "world's first publicist for AI influencers". "Now it's really about what particular business challenges can they solve."

Pixel currently represents 19 AI influencers and consults with household brands trying to work out whether synthetic personas make sense for their marketing stack. Davey believes that in order for brands to enter this space and do it well, it's vital to avoid the "AI is replacing humans" narrative and focus on how AI influencers can solve specific business challenges.

An AI influencer, in this model, is persistent infrastructure: always-on, with defined character, posting rhythms and an audience relationship built over months.

Many brands are still deciding whether to embrace or run, but the hedging itself signals maturity. The industry hasn't aborted artificiality. Now it needs to regulate its teething pains.

Information is the currency

Davey points to Pixel's work with Driven Flex — a commuter bus platform in the Middle East, navigating a multilingual market where reputational damage escalates faster. "With an AI influencer, you have an always-on ambassador and full control of your messaging," he explains. "You can talk to those consumers in multiple languages."

Travel and automotive lead adoption because they trade in information density: routes, specs, availability. The audience doesn't need the persona to be authentic. It needs it to be accurate.

It’s also worth nothing that human influencer fees have tripled in three years. Negotiations take weeks. AI doesn't negotiate. Audiences tolerate AI influencers in functional contexts. They don't seek them out. But brands aren't optimising for affection. They're optimising for margin and control.

Some might ask: if this is just information delivery, why not use a chatbot? Because audiences on social platforms expect personas, not interfaces. A chatbot on a website makes sense. A chatbot in your Instagram feed breaks the social contract.

Davey uses a running shoe launch as his framework example. "I can really see a world where different influencers perform a different task in a campaign and it's the AI Influencer that provides the more functional 24/7." The synthetic persona sits on brand channels, trained for 400 hours on technical specs, ready to answer questions about carbon fibre soles. Human influencers create shareable content, drive cultural moments, build aspiration.

"I think information is a kind of currency for audiences, and brands could use this technology to serve them in this way," Davey says.

Sambhav Chadha, co-founder of Augmentum Media, sees it from a different angle. His clients prioritise speed. "Clients are looking at AI influencers to reduce the current back-and-forth between brands and influencers, and instead run brand-first promotions through influencers that can activate tomorrow."

“Where messaging must be uniform, where timelines are short, or compliance is an issue,” he adds.

The strongest interest comes from "low-trust industries (gaming, low-ticket tech, toys) where creative simply needs to show off the product, not lean into what we'd typically call 'influence.'"

Otherwise his agency rarely recommends it. "Authenticity and trust are still the two driving pillars of performance-led influencer marketing, and AI provides neither."

Where the logic breaks down

Beauty and wellness show where it doesn't work. Davey points to David Beckham's health supplement brand IM8, which ran an AI video advert. "It was one of the first times I thought that a category shouldn't use AI influencers, given the importance of trust and authenticity required for products you're putting inside your body."

Where claims matter and embodied testimony is currency, synthetic actors lack standing.

Jenny Emslie, chief executive and founder of Sunshine: the social agency, represents the other half of the equation. "None of our clients are coming to us asking for AI influencers and that in itself says a lot." Her concern isn't technical — it's categorical. "AI can't replicate lived experience, which is where influence really happens."

The work she describes — building emotional resonance, driving cultural moments — requires human creators. "Most audiences just don't care enough to engage with AI personalities long-term. They might generate a burst of attention, but sustaining it is another story."

Harry Foyle, founder and director at FiveByFive, is blunter. "Strongly advise you don't use them. Human interaction is vital. The rise of influencers has been due to the nature on which there is real behavioural interaction between the user and influencer. Beliefs, trust, genuine opinions. An AI influencer is fake."

Matt Lawton, chief marketing officer at FiveByFive, also identifies a problem that persists even when deployment context is correct. "The AIs we've seen so far have mostly been cutesy young women and male model men that undermine the multicultural and body acceptance goals of progressive brands. But if brands then look to reflect that with diverse AIs, they're denying work for the human influencers of those groups so it's a no-win situation."

Chadha draws the same categorical line: "We actively discourage use in any context where lived experience, cultural resonance, or genuine endorsement is required."

Brands deployed AI in aspirational contexts — fashion, beauty, lifestyle — where audiences evaluate products through social proof and cultural authority. Guess generated criticism because fashion marketing trades in cultural capital. Dove swore off AI because beauty campaigns require trust built through repeated human connection.

What systematic deployment looks like

The regulatory floor is already set. The EU AI Act mandates disclosure for synthetic media. UK ASA/CAP requires clear labelling. TikTok, Meta, and YouTube mandate disclosure across platforms. These aren't obstacles. They're the permission structure that lets brands deploy with confidence. Regulation didn't slow adoption. It formalised it.

Aitana Lopez built 350,000+ followers over two years posting about yoga, gaming, fitness, fashion. "She consistently serves her audiences and they know what they're going to get on a daily and weekly basis. I think over time, that sort of consistency builds authenticity," Davey says.

Consistency isn't authenticity — it's reliability misinterpreted as personality. Aitana's followers aren't following a person. They're subscribing to a content vertical that posts predictably.

Pixel is preparing to launch Alex, an AI influencer built around the England Lionesses football team — relatable body shape, wears make-up less often, plays football, connects with families and grassroots sport. The brief was explicit: challenge the "pixel-perfect, unrealistic beauty standards" criticism by designing someone credible from the start. "Which could be a good door opener for conversation to brands" Davey suggests. The long-term plan is to partner with an amateur girls' football team, raising awareness of grassroots sport.

Whether audiences will accept a synthetic persona in a category built on genuine athletic achievement remains to be seen. Alex is a test case, not a proof point.

Bryony Leslie Barker, associate strategy director at Digital Natives, describes a third mode. Brands are using AI to "experiment with personality, without the unpredictability."

"Computer-generated creativity also inspires human creativity," Barker notes, pointing to Nike's Slawn inflatables and Skims' visual experiments — work that wouldn't exist without AI expanding what's possible. Not replacement. Creative cross-pollination.

Her advice for brands considering hybrid models: "balance human and AI influencers with the same scrutiny you would other activations and campaigns — they should play distinct but complementary roles in building your brand world."

The creators who'll thrive are the ones who specialise in work that synthetic personas structurally can't replicate: lived testimony, spontaneous cultural commentary, vulnerable disclosure that builds trust through repeated human interaction. 

The ones caught in the middle — doing neither brilliantly — will find clients asking why they're paying human rates for work a trained model delivers systematically.

If the brief requires lived experience, hire a human. If it requires consistent information delivery at scale, design a system. And if you can't tell the difference, you're not ready to deploy either.

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Natasha Randhawa, newsletter editor