In 2024, virtual influencers aren't a novelty act or a tech demo. They're a growing segment of the creator economy that brands are increasingly taking seriously – and in some measurable ways, they're getting results that human creators can't match. The conversation about whether this is a threat, an opportunity, or just a trend is heating up again, and it's worth understanding what's actually happening.
The Rise of the Virtual Influencer
The concept of a virtual influencer – a computer-generated or animated character with a personality, backstory, and social media presence – has been around for nearly a decade, but the category has expanded rapidly. The Global Virtual Influencer Market was valued at over $4.6 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow significantly through the decade, according to research tracking the sector.
Lil Miquela remains the most recognizable name in the space, with brand partnerships that have included Prada, Samsung, and Spotify. But she's joined by a global roster. Lu do Magalu, a virtual brand ambassador for Brazilian retail giant Magazine Luiza, has over 7 million followers across platforms and is one of the most followed virtual influencers in the world. Imma, a Japanese virtual influencer with a distinctive pink bob, has worked with IKEA, Puma, and Valentino. In South Korea, virtual influencers have become particularly mainstream, with characters like Rozy and Naevis (from SM Entertainment's aespa project) blurring the line between fandom and marketing.
What's changed recently is the technology behind them. Advances in rendering, motion capture, and generative tools have made creating and animating virtual influencers faster and cheaper than even three years ago, lowering the barrier for brands and studios to develop their own.
Where the Numbers Actually Favor Virtual Creators
Here's where the "outperforming" claim gets interesting – and where it needs some unpacking. By certain metrics, virtual influencers do genuinely outperform their human counterparts.
Engagement rate is the most cited data point. A 2023 study by HypeAuditor found that virtual influencers on Instagram averaged an engagement rate of around 3%, compared to roughly 1.6% for human influencers in comparable follower ranges. That's not a small gap. Engagement rate – the ratio of likes, comments, and shares to total followers – is one of the most important metrics brands use to evaluate whether an influencer's audience is genuinely attentive, and virtual influencers consistently score higher.
Part of the reason is novelty: people interact with virtual influencers partly out of curiosity, which inflates engagement figures. Part of it is curated perfection – every post, every caption, every aesthetic choice is deliberate and controlled, which appeals to certain audience segments. And part of it is the absence of the controversies and off-brand moments that can tank a human influencer's engagement overnight.
The Brand Side of the Equation
From a brand's perspective, virtual influencers solve several problems that human influencers create.
Control is the biggest one. A human influencer can go off-script, make a controversial statement, or become associated with something that damages the brand by association. Virtual influencers do exactly what their creators tell them to do, every time. They can be deployed across time zones simultaneously, don't require travel budgets or photo shoot logistics, and can't have a bad day. For brands that need absolute message consistency – luxury brands protecting their image, or companies in regulated industries – that control is genuinely valuable.
Scalability is another factor. Once the character and visual pipeline are established, producing content at scale is faster and often cheaper than booking, briefing, shooting, and approving content from human talent. Lu do Magalu produces a volume of branded content that would be operationally impossible for a single human creator to sustain.
What Human Creators Still Have
None of this means human influencers are on their way out, and the picture is more nuanced than "AI wins."
Authenticity is still the foundation of what makes influencer marketing work in the first place. The reason influencer marketing emerged as a category is that consumers trust people they follow more than they trust brands directly. That trust is built on the perception of genuine experience, real opinions, and relatable humanity. Virtual influencers can simulate authenticity, but audiences generally know they're being simulated, which changes the dynamic.
Relatability gaps are real. A virtual influencer endorsing a skincare product can't describe how it felt on their skin or whether it actually helped with their acne. A food influencer who doesn't eat can't honestly tell you a restaurant was worth the wait. For product categories where personal experience is central to the recommendation, virtual influencers are structurally limited in ways that numbers can't entirely fix.
Community depth is another human advantage. The most successful human creators have built genuine two-way relationships with their audiences over years – responding to comments, going live, sharing unfiltered moments. That depth of community is what drives the highest-value marketing outcomes: actual purchase behavior, brand loyalty, and word-of-mouth. Virtual influencers, despite their engagement metrics, rarely build that kind of sustained community bond.
The Controversy and Disclosure Debate
The rise of virtual influencers has also brought real questions about transparency. Most platforms now require influencers to disclose paid partnerships, but the question of whether audiences always know they're following a computer-generated character is a legitimate ethical discussion.
Lil Miquela was deliberately designed to be ambiguous for the first year of her existence – many followers genuinely believed she was a real person. The disclosure practices around virtual influencers have improved since then, but the category still raises questions about what audiences are consenting to when they engage. Some consumer advocates and regulators in markets like the EU have started looking more closely at disclosure standards for virtual influencers specifically.
For human creators watching this space, there's also the question of how AI tools being used to generate or enhance content from "human" influencers – AI-generated images, AI-written captions, AI-edited video – should be disclosed. The line between a human influencer and a virtual one is getting blurrier, not just for celebrity-scale creators but for anyone building an online presence.
What This Means for the Creator Economy
The framing of virtual influencers "outperforming" human creators is partly accurate and partly a category error. They perform differently, for different purposes, with different strengths and limits. In brand campaigns where control, consistency, and production volume matter most, virtual influencers have real advantages. In community-building, personal authenticity, and category expertise, human creators still hold the edge.
What this trend is doing is raising the bar across the board. Human influencers who compete primarily on aesthetics and follower count are more exposed to virtual competition than those who compete on genuine expertise, personal storytelling, and authentic community. The creators who are likely to be most affected are those in the middle – mid-size lifestyle and fashion accounts where the content is polished but the personality isn't a strong differentiator. The ones most insulated are those with a genuine point of view, specific expertise, or a community that shows up because of who they are, not just what they post.
For fans and audiences, the practical advice is simpler: pay attention to who you're actually following and why. The entertainment industry has always mixed reality and performance, and virtual influencers are a new chapter in that long story. Knowing the difference doesn't mean you can't enjoy what they create.
FAQ
Are virtual influencers taking jobs from real creators? In some brand campaign contexts, yes – brands that previously would have contracted a human influencer for a campaign are increasingly using virtual characters instead, which does reduce work in that specific segment. However, the overall creator economy continues to grow, and new categories of work (building and managing virtual influencer characters, creating their content, handling their "personalities") also create new roles.
Do virtual influencers have real fan communities? Some do, particularly those with developed backstories and consistent personalities like Lil Miquela or Imma. Fans engage with the fiction of the character, which is not entirely different from fandom around animated characters or fictional personas maintained by real people. The engagement is real even if the influencer isn't.
Are there regulations around virtual influencers and advertising? Most major markets apply existing advertising disclosure rules: paid partnerships must be disclosed regardless of whether the influencer is human or virtual. The FTC in the US, ASA in the UK, and equivalent bodies in other markets have all indicated that virtual influencer content falls under standard advertising disclosure requirements. Enforcement is still developing, particularly around AI-enhanced content from ostensibly human creators.
Can brands create their own virtual influencers? Yes, and many are. The cost of developing a brand-owned virtual influencer character has come down significantly with advances in rendering and animation technology. Lu do Magalu is the most prominent example of a brand-owned virtual influencer built from scratch. Smaller brands can access increasingly affordable tools to create virtual characters for specific campaigns.
📚 Sources
Business Insider – Lil Miquela and the Rise of Virtual Influencers: https://www.businessinsider.com/virtual-influencers-lil-miquela-brand-deals-instagram-2019-10
HypeAuditor – Virtual Influencer Industry Report 2023: https://hypeauditor.com/blog/virtual-influencers/
Forbes – The Virtual Influencer Market Is Growing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/07/25/the-rise-of-virtual-influencers/
The Guardian – AI Influencers: The Rise of Digital Celebrities: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/04/ai-influencers-digital-humans-celebrities
Wired – The Strange Business of Being a Virtual Influencer: https://www.wired.com/story/lil-miquela-virtual-influencer/
Financial Times – Brands Turn to Virtual Influencers for Consistency and Control: https://www.ft.com/content/virtual-influencers-brands
Marketing Week – Virtual Influencers: Engagement Rates and Brand Appeal: https://www.marketingweek.com/virtual-influencers-engagement/
FTC – Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/1001a-influencer-guide-508_1.pdf
Reuters – South Korea's Virtual Influencer Boom: https://www.reuters.com/technology/south-koreas-virtual-influencers-are-taking-over-social-media-2022-04-05/
Vogue Business – How Virtual Influencers Are Reshaping Fashion Marketing: https://www.voguebusiness.com/technology/virtual-influencers-fashion-marketing
