With more people turning to the likes of Instagram and TikTok for their entertainment, advertisers, including and especially luxury brands, have begun using influencers to help spread their brand messaging and sell their products in more ostensibly authentic ways.

Working directly with such talent can be both a big creative boon, and a headache for brands and advertisers. Influencers are regularly flagged by the Advertising Standards Authority for breaking existing codes of conduct.

That is why some more recently are turning to AI influencers, which are growing followings. One Spanish agency, The Clueless, recently used AI tools to create Aitana, a 25-year-old pink-haired "woman" from Barcelona who, according to the agency, looks real enough that an unnamed human celebrity slid into her DMs to ask her out. Aitana reportedly has netted the agency $11,000 in monthly revenue and has over 170,000 followers on Instagram.

Scott Guthrie, director general of the Influencer Marketing Trade Body, joins Jack Benjamin to talk through the opportunities and risks of developing and employing AI influencers, and also touches on the importance of professionalising the influencer market to create a sustainable growth outlook for the industry.

Drawing a distinction between influencers and other talent used in marketing, Guthrie said: "Influencers live and die by their community."

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This episode was edited by our production partner Trisonic.

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