When Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker of the House, attended the Outside Lands music festival last month in her home district of San Francisco, she took a selfie with a popular influencer who has 2.4 million followers.
“me vibing to @gracieabrams and i look up and it’s literally @speakerpelosi,” the influencer, who goes by Lil’ Miquela, captioned the photo, in which the two are seen smiling.
The catch, of course, is that Lil’ Miquela isn’t real. She is one of a slew of influencers created through artificial intelligence who have gained popularity in recent years, despite the fact that they don’t exist.
Mia Zelu, a blond-haired, blue-eyed A.I. influencer with 167,000 followers, recently made headlines for “attending” Wimbledon. And a recent report by the online creation platform Kapwing found that computer-generated celebrities are amassing millions of followers — and dollars — for the teams behind them. Lu of Magalu, a Brazilian A.I. influencer with more than eight million Instagram followers who serves as the voice of the Brazilian retailer Magalu, rakes in $34,320 per post, while Miquela makes about $73,920.
Introduced in 2016, and considered by many to be the “original” A.I. influencer, Miquela has appeared on magazine covers, released music and served as the face of campaigns for Calvin Klein and Prada, all while purporting to be a Brazilian American teen from Downey, Calif. (She now identifies as 22.)
The account is run by a team at the tech company Dapper Labs, which specializes in creating video games and collectibles. The team creates the story lines, images and captions that bring Miquela to life, and builds partnerships with brands, celebrities and politicians that give the impression Miquela exists beyond the computer screen.
Ms. Pelosi, who was approached by numerous people for selfies at the festival, could not be reached for comment. But Dapper Labs confirmed there was no affiliation between the politician and the influencer.
“Miquela has a fantastic team behind her,” Ridhima Kahn, the vice president of partnerships for Dapper, said in a recent interview. “We think it’s healthy to have multiple people thinking through Michaela’s voice, analyzing what we’re seeing her audience care about, worry about, think about, and also understand what are the problems in the world today that Michaela can have a voice on.”
Recently, those problems include leukemia and the rise of deepfakes — computer-generated imagery created without a person’s consent — of which Miquela frequently posted she was a victim. Though some may find it distasteful for a fake person to pretend to suffer from a real illness like cancer, Ms. Kahn said Miquela’s focus on raising awareness around important issues helped her stand out among other A.I. creations that are primarily focused on brand collaborations (though she does those, too).
Dapper acquired Miquela when it bought the start-up Brud in 2021.
“We decided we wanted to bring her on board because we saw a lot of opportunity in the future of virtual influencers, and particularly Miquela, who is very authentic and has maintained a very authentic stance, really trying to be a change maker, social activist, and relatable to her fan base,” Ms. Kahn said.
Miquela is also less photorealistic than other popular A.I. influencers, like Mia Zelu, whom many commenters seem convinced is a real person. Though Miquela may go through some future upgrades, it is purposeful that she remains easily identifiable as being computer generated. “She’s very transparent about the fact that she isn’t real,” Ms. Kahn said.
Though A.I. influencers have their fans — Miquela’s skew 75 percent female, according to Dapper Labs — they also have their detractors, who comment using anti-A.I. terms like “clanker.”
But as real celebrities and influencers try to be perceived as more “authentic,” many A.I. influencers like Miquela and Mia Zelu are leaning into their unrealness, proudly claiming their robot monikers in their bios and having no shame about posting in Hong Kong at 3 p.m. and in New York an hour later. In fact, the teams behind them feel the lack of a corporeal form may be their best selling point.
“From a brand perspective, we are able to create a very dynamic story line,” Ms. Kahn said. “So Michaela can be, for example, in London one day supporting an art gallery opening, and in L.A. the same day to support a new coffee shop that she really likes, right? I think brands love that she can be anywhere.”
And in an era of Photoshop and Facetune, where everything is edited and modified, the lines of reality are getting increasingly blurred.
“I think the next generation isn’t really thinking as much about is this person real or not?” Ms. Kahn said. “It’s more about: ‘What does this account stand for?’”
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