This is Not Chidinma or Miss Denmark-Meet Aitana Lopez; the AI Influencer

This is not Miss Denmark from the just concluded Miss Universe. I bet you also think she is an American pop star. Do you really want to know her?

Meet Aitana Lopez, a Spanish AI Influencer, created by Clueless Agency, based out of Barcelona in Spain. Yes, AI.

Based on Aitana's persona and design, she is 25-year old female fitness enthusiast. She has appeared in ads in Time Square, New York, and is an ambassador to a sports supplements brand. Her profile indicates that she is a digital creator. There are videos on her Instagram page @fit_aitana.

Aitana rakes in $11,000 monthly for Clueless Agency through various modeling gigs, especially fitness modeling. The agency has created other models; Maia Lima and Lia Zadley- both digital females.

Clueless Agency; the creators of Aitana wanted to reduce the hassles of managing real-life models, so they leveraged the hyper-realism features of artificial intelligence to create Aitana.

The ability to create a digital influencer has the implication of reducing costs for traditional modeling agencies. It also creates an opportunity to create a new kind of agency that solely deals in digital influencers and models. Ultimately, this creates more use cases for the Metaverse, NFT's, virtual gaming, extended reality and virtual reality projects. This development generally beholds a brighter future for blockchain development. But at what cost to existing jobs? Will this destroy jobs across the advertising direct and indirect value chains?

Diana Nunez, a co-founder at Clueless tries to answer this question by saying that she does not see developments like Aitana taking the jobs of human influencers, but that there is a possibility that Aitana will take on more tasks in the future.

Impact on Advertising Jobs

The challenge with human influencers and models, remains that their costs are becoming prohibitive, says Ruben Cruz; co-founder at the agency. But people yearn for human interaction and figures, so they won't go away. However, Aitana now has over 300,000 followers on Instagram, and this followership has been attributed to her "perceived personality", implying that digital creations are eliciting similar emotions from humans, just the way physical models have done. Improvements in haptic technology, and realism will deepen this experience.

The Rise of AI Girlfriends and Ethics

There is no better evidence of future adoption or interactions with digital personas than the rise of AI girlfriends and AI sex symbols. Lu do Magalu, a Brazilian model, created with 3D AI art, commands a huge followership on 7.3 million followers on Instagram. And there is Caryn Marjorie, a 23-year-old influencer, who though human has now created a virtual version of herself, call is digital clone. Her digital version now serves as a virtual girlfriend to over 1,000 men. Real men pay $1 per minute to spend time with virtual Marjorie. What makes this virtual interaction unique is that the consciousness of real-life Marjorie reflects in the virtual Marjorie

This development calls for reflection on ethics and likely mutation in human interaction in the future. Despite the fears of AI dystopia and doom, one fact remains- Generative AI and its challenges are here to stay.