Meet the AI influencer who makes up to £8,600 a month – even celebrities ask her out and are shocked she doesn’t exist
A SPANISH modelling agency has created an AI influencer to steer the company out of a rough financial patch.
The pink-haired 25-year-old digital woman, called Aitana, apparently looks real enough to fool a human celebrity, who is said to have slid into her DMs and asked her out.
The agency, known as The Clueless, told Euronews that Aitana is raking in a whopping $11,000 (£8,600) per month in modelling gigs and social media jobs.
Aitana's Instagram account has amassed nearly 150,000 followers, which helps her secure brand deals worth over $1,100 (£870) each.
Beyond that, the AI model also sells racy images on a platform called Fanvue, an app similar to OnlyFans.
"We did it so that we could make a better living and not be dependent on other people who have egos, who have manias, or who just want to make a lot of money by posing," Aitana's cocreator, and founder of The Clueless, Rubén Cruz told Euronews.
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"One day, a well-known Latin American actor texted to ask her out
"This actor has about five million followers and some of our team watched his TV series when they were kids.
"He had no idea Aitana didn't exist."
Aitana is not the first - and certainly won't be the last.
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Over the past 12 months, AI influencers have been netting millions from deals with fashion giants such as Dior, Calvin Klein, Chanel and Prada - even though they were made on a computer.
The world of the virtual influencer is already estimated to be worth an eye-watering £3.5billion and is projected to grow by 26 per cent by 2025, according to experts.
AI influencers offer modelling agencies and fashion houses the opportunity to cut deals that don't factor in a human model's welfare.
They can be miles cheaper, too.
But why would business behemoths like Dior and Prada want an AI model when they can afford the real deal?
"They want to have an image that is not a real person and that represents their brand values, so that there are no continuity problems if they have to fire someone or can no longer count on them," Cruz said.
Artificial Intelligence explained
Here's what you need to know
- Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, is a type of computer software
- Typically, a computer will do what you tell it to do
- But artificial intelligence simulates the human mind, and can make its own deductions, inferences or decisions
- A simple computer might let you set an alarm to wake you up
- But an AI system might scan your emails, work out that you’ve got a meeting tomorrow, and then set an alarm and plan a journey for you
- AI tech is often “trained” – which means it observes something (potentially even a human) then learns about a task over time
- For instance, an AI system can be fed thousands of photos of human faces, then generate photos of human faces all on its own
- Some experts have raised concerns that humans will eventually lose control of super-intelligent AI
- But the tech world is still divided over whether or not AI tech will eventually kill us all in a Terminator-style apocalypse