The Rise of AI Influencers: Are They Taking Over Social Media?

Sat Dec 27 2025 13:58:03 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

Meet Gigi, an AI-generated influencer created by Simone McKenzie, and explore how AI is reshaping the influencer landscape, leaving traditional influencers in a competitive scramble.

In an era where social media 'influencing' is a billion-dollar career, AI influencers like Gigi, created by university student Simone McKenzie, are poised to disrupt the traditional landscape. With the ability to quickly generate content without the reality constraints faced by human influencers, AI creations are changing how audiences interact and consume content. Some experts warn of potential misinformation challenges while others see it as a democratizing force that allows everyone, regardless of resources, to go viral.

In some ways, Gigi is like any other young social media influencer.

With perfect hair and makeup, she logs on and talks to her fans. She shares clips: eating, doing skin care, putting on lipstick. She even has a cute baby who appears in some videos.

But after a few seconds, something may seem a little off.

She can munch on pizza made out of molten lava, or apply snowflakes and cotton candy as lip gloss. Her hands sometimes pass through what she's holding.

That's because Gigi isn't real. She's the AI creation of University of Illinois student Simone Mckenzie - who needed to make some money over the summer.

Ms Mckenzie, 21, is part of a fast-growing cohort of digital creators who churn out a stream of videos by entering simple prompts into AI chatbots, like Google Veo 3. Experts say this genre, dubbed AI slop by some critics and begrudging viewers, is taking over social media feeds.

And its creators are finding considerable success.

One video made me $1,600 [£1,185] in just four days," Ms Mckenzie said. I was like, okay, let me keep doing this.

After two months, Gigi had millions of views, making Ms Mckenzie thousands through TikTok's creator fund, a program that pays creators based on how many views they get. But she's far from the only person using AI to reach easy virality, experts said.

It's surging right now and it's probably going to continue, said Jessa Lingel, associate professor and digital culture expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Its progenitors - who now can generate videos of literally anything in just a few minutes - have the potential to disrupt the lucrative influencer economy.

But while some say AI is ruining social media, others see its potential to democratise who gains fame online, Lingel said. Those who don't have the money or time for a fancy background, camera setup or video editing tools can now go viral, too.

Social media influencing only recently became a legitimate career path. But in just a few years, the industry has grown to be worth over $250bn, according to investment firm Goldman Sachs. Online creators often use their own lives - their vacations, their pets, their makeup routines - to make content and attract a following.

AI creators who can make the same thing - only faster, cheaper and without the constraints of reality.

It certainly has the potential to upset the creator space, said Brooke Duffy, a digital and social media scholar at Cornell University.

Ms Mckenzie, creator of Gigi, said videos take her only a few minutes to generate and she sometimes posts three per day.

That's not feasible for human influencers like Kaaviya Sambasivam, 26, who has around 1.3 million followers across multiple platforms.

Depending on the kind of video she's making - whether it's a recipe, a day-in-my life vlog, or a makeup tutorial - it may take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to fully produce. She has to shop, plan, set up her background and lighting, shoot and then edit.

AI creators can skip nearly all of those steps.

It bears the question: is this going to be something that we can out compete? Because I am a human. My output is limited, Ms Sambasivam, based in North Carolina, said.

Ms Mckenzie said she considered being a more traditional influencer, but didn't have the money, time or setup. That's why she created Gigi.

Ms Duffy said digital alterations aren't new. First, there were programs like Photoshop, used for image editing. Next, apps like FaceTune made it easier for users to change their faces for social media. But she said the main precursor to today's hyper-realistic AI videos were celebrity deepfakes, emerging in the late 2010s.

But they now look much, much more real, Ms Duffy said, and they can spread faster.

AI videos run the gamut from the absurd - a cartoon of a cat working at McDonald's - to the hyper-realistic, like fake doorbell camera footage. They represent every genre - horror, comedy, culinary. But none of it is real.

On the other hand, AI videos can be mesmerizing, experts said, offering cartoonish, exaggerated material.

A Harvard University study indicated that among AI users between the ages of 14-22, many say they use it to generate things like images and music.

Still, she said, the question is if human discernment can keep up with rapidly improving technology. Almost every day, the creator of Gamja said she hears from people online, worried about her AI-generated puppy: they think he's eating foods that are unhealthy, they say - because they think they're watching a real dog.