The rise of the virtual influencer

Brut America

Is the influencer you follow real or AI?   YouTuber Jordi van den Bussche talks to Brut about why he has replaced himself with a virtual influencer, an AI-generated character that lives online ...

Transcript

00:00A virtual influencer cannot die. A virtual influencer can work 24-7, never get tired,

00:06never complain. I think the next person that's going to be the number one influencer is not

00:13going to be a real person. This is Jordi van den Busse, commonly known for his YouTube channel

00:18Kwebbelkop. He posted his first YouTube video in 2011 and quickly rose to fame, becoming a full-time

00:24content creator by 2013. He currently has nearly 15 million followers and has replaced himself

00:30with a virtual influencer. I was grinding, I was making YouTube videos and a bunch of other content

00:35and I experienced a burnout so I had to take some time for myself to really take some better care of

00:41myself and during this process I realized that I'm building a business that revolves all around me

00:49which means that if something would be to happen to me then game over for the business. I came to

00:53the conclusion that virtual influencers was the solution to this. AI and VR technology are

00:59transforming the world of influencers and content creators, giving rise to the virtual influencer,

01:04a computer-generated or animated digital character that lives online. Reportedly, over half of

01:09Americans follow at least one virtual influencer. Mikaela and Luda Magalu are some of the most famous

01:15virtual influencers with very significant followings. A virtual influencer is an influencer

01:23which isn't 100% human. It's either going to be based on a celebrity or a famous person or it's

01:30going to be an entirely newly fabricated entity. Virtual influencers exist in many forms depending

01:37on how the creator behind them likes to run the account. Some creators delegate the entire process

01:42to software, from scripting to editing, even replacing themselves with an avatar in the video.

01:47But a virtual influencer could also be a creator who uses face filters in videos but runs the rest

01:52of their channel manually. You see me, I'm a real person. This is what I look like. But if I would

01:58put on a filter that makes me look like an ape or a marshmallow, I am now a virtual influencer.

02:06So there's this big slider so you can go very much done by human or go completely AI generated.

02:13I personally prefer somewhere in the middle. VondenBusse's new channel, Blue Gaming,

02:18currently has over 680,000 subscribers, generates over 1 million dollars revenue annually,

02:24oh and it's mostly run by AI technology. My goal is to create an AI influencer that's 100%

02:31ran by AI and that makes 100% AI generated content and doesn't need any human intervention.

02:39VondenBusse thinks a major reason behind the virtual influencer hype is their ability to be

02:43scandal-free unlike their human counterparts. To the delight of PR companies and brands looking

02:48for influencer partnerships, virtual influencers cannot be cancelled, for the most part.

02:54There's a lot of challenges that just AI in general is facing but it's yet another hurdle

02:59that everyone in tech is going to try to overcome. What a lot of people have seen though is that a

03:04virtual influencer says something that is offensive and those are simply bugs that

03:10still need to be worked on. The implications of AI are expected to extend far beyond virtual

03:16influencers. It's not just the influencer space that's getting disrupted, it's every industry

03:21in a year from now. The skills that they're teaching in the education system are going to be

03:25outdated, we're going to have to rethink jobs, we're really going to move from a work-first society

03:31to a society that's focused much more on passion. Right now we're at the start of this insane

03:37revolution and I'm super stoked for the future. If I die, please have the AI

03:43continue running my YouTube channel.

Category

Transcript

Recommended