In November 2023, a 19-year-old “model” named Aitana López started racking up sponsorship deals from real brands on Instagram. She had pink hair, a million-dollar lifestyle, and a suspiciously perfect face. She also did not exist. Her creator, a Spanish agency called The Clueless, built her entirely in AI software and was reportedly earning up to 10,000 euros per month on brand deals before the story broke worldwide.
The rise of AI influencers has gone from a weird Silicon Valley experiment to a full-blown crisis in how we know what is real online. Some of these fake personalities have more followers than actual A-list celebrities. Others have landed partnerships with real fashion houses. And most of them fooled a lot of people for a very long time before anyone noticed.
Aitana López, the Spanish Influencer Who Never Existed
Aitana López is the one that finally made mainstream news organizations panic about AI influencers. The Clueless agency, founded by Rubén Cruz in Barcelona, said they built her because real models were “becoming too complicated.” Their words, not ours.
Her Instagram now has over 300,000 followers, and Euronews confirmed she has been offered paid campaigns by real beauty and sports brands. At one point, a “well-known Latin American actor” reportedly slid into her DMs to ask her on a date, not realizing she was software. The agency politely declined.
What makes Aitana particularly interesting is that her creators never tried to hide what she was. Her bio clearly states she is AI-generated. People just did not read it. And brands paid her anyway, which tells you everything about where marketing is headed.
Lil Miquela Has Been Fooling Everyone Since 2016
Miquela Sousa, better known as Lil Miquela, is the elder statesman of fake influencers. Created by a Los Angeles startup called Brud in 2016, she has spent nearly a decade posing as a 19-year-old Brazilian-American music artist. She has somehow never aged.
For the first two years of her existence, most people genuinely thought she was a real person with heavy filters. Then in 2018, a rival virtual influencer account “hacked” her profile and outed her as CGI, sparking one of the weirdest PR stunts in internet history. Time magazine named her one of the 25 most influential people on the internet anyway.
According to reporting from The Business of Fashion and OnBuy, Lil Miquela has generated millions in brand deals with Calvin Klein, Prada, Samsung, and BMW. She has an estimated net worth in the tens of millions, which is genuinely ridiculous considering she is a file on a computer.
How Did a Fake Model Land a Real Dior Campaign?
In 2022, a virtual influencer named Shudu Gram appeared in a Balmain Paris campaign alongside two other virtual models who did not exist. The campaign was a real paid project, the photography budget was real, and no human model ever stepped in front of a camera.
Shudu was created by British photographer Cameron-James Wilson, who described her as “the world’s first digital supermodel.” She has since appeared in campaigns and editorials that would have paid a real working model tens of thousands of dollars. Wilson has been open about her fake origins from day one, but real modeling agencies still signed her for representation.
This whole category exploded into a debate about whether using AI models counts as cutting out diverse, real, working humans from a job. Model advocates and union representatives have openly criticized the trend. The brands, predictably, have kept on hiring them.
The Brazilian AI Influencer Who Sparked a Regulatory Crisis
In early 2024, a Brazilian AI influencer named “Ana Luiza” started appearing in real sponsored content for legitimate hair care brands. The problem was that she looked so convincing that consumers started buying the products based on her reviews, believing she was a real hairstylist.
Brazilian regulators at Procon-SP got involved after complaints, arguing that undisclosed AI influencer endorsements violated consumer protection laws. The case helped push Brazil toward becoming one of the first countries to require legal disclosure that an influencer is AI-generated in all sponsored posts.
Similar discussions have now reached the United States, where the FTC has signaled that endorsement guidelines absolutely apply to AI-generated personalities. In the European Union, the AI Act passed in 2024 also includes transparency rules that cover this exact situation. The law is finally catching up.
The AI Instagram Model Who Got Catfished Back
Here is a genuinely hilarious plot twist. In 2024, Rubén Cruz, the creator of Aitana López, told The Daily Telegraph that multiple celebrities and public figures had reached out to Aitana’s DMs, trying to pursue her romantically. One of them was reportedly a well-known international athlete who refused to accept that she was not real even after being told.
The agency has a rotating team of staff who handle the AI’s actual responses, which makes the whole thing even weirder. Imagine trying to flirt with someone on Instagram and the person replying to you is a 35-year-old marketing employee pretending to be a 19-year-old pink-haired model who is, in turn, pretending to be a real person.
Why Are Brands Still Paying Them?
The short answer is that AI influencers never have bad press days, never get drunk at parties, never post something problematic, and never demand creative control. For a marketing team, that is the dream.
According to a 2023 HypeAuditor report, the virtual influencer industry is projected to reach a market size of over $45 billion by 2030. That is not a typo. For comparison, the entire global music industry generated around $28 billion in 2023. The people who could not monetize their own social media are about to lose their potential careers to fake avatars.
One Last Thing
The most surreal part of this entire phenomenon is that some of these AI influencers have become more financially successful than the real humans who built them. Their creators sit behind the scenes earning less than their fake creations do in sponsorships. It is the most unlikely power dynamic of the decade.
If you want another wild take on internet personas that fooled people for years, our piece on the biggest internet hoaxes is the perfect next read. Have you ever followed an influencer who turned out to be fake? Drop it in the comments.