The rise of virtual influencers

These humans do not exist and they are ready to steal hearts and influence people

At first glance, Lil Miquela looks like any other Instagram influencer. A young girl sharing her life and travels with 2.6 million followers while hanging out with friends and having a good time. But Lil Miquela is not a real human. You can’t meet in a coffee shop and have a conversation with her. She is a virtual person and is just one of many virtual influencers that emerged in recent years.

A virtual influencer is a digitally created or computer-generated character designed with human-like traits and personalities, used in social media and marketing campaigns to engage with real audiences. These characters can range from realistic to fantastical designs and are often integrated into various platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok, where they post content, interact with users, and promote products or messages just like human influencers.

Thanks to technology getting better and more accessible, creating a virtual influencer has become easier, which gave rise to an entire cohort of virtual models, artists and influencers competing with humans on social media platforms for our attention and connection.

In this article, we will explore this new, futuristic approach to doing a very old thing: stealing hearts and influencing people.

How to make a virtual human?

Advances in computer graphics, motion capture and the emergence of generative AI have made creating virtual humans easier than ever before.

With Unreal Engine and MetaHuman, it is possible to create digital humans that not only look realistic but also behave realistically in an editor that works similarly to a character creation screen in video games.