A publicly traded company acquired Khabe Lame's brand with plans to create an AI version of him. This "digital twin" can generate content and run marketing campaigns 24/7, overcoming human limitations. It represents a new model for scaling an influencer's brand and monetizing their audience.
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Instead of 'renting' influence from human creators, companies should build proprietary AI-generated virtual influencers. This AI persona becomes an ownable asset and a competitive moat, providing consistent and controllable brand representation without the high costs and risks of human influencers.
The long-term strategy for influencer marketing platform Stormy AI is not just to automate outreach to humans, but to create and deploy its own stable of AI-generated influencers. The founder believes AI UGC will become the norm, allowing brands to spin up armies of custom, AI-driven personas to create content at scale.
Creators will deploy AI avatars, or 'U-Bots,' trained on their personalities to engage in individual, long-term conversations with their entire audience. These bots will remember shared experiences, fostering a deep, personal connection with millions of fans simultaneously—a scale previously unattainable.
The influencer economy is facing its own disruption from AI. Brands will soon leverage completely fictional, AI-generated personalities for marketing, which is a natural evolution from human influencers taking brand deals away from traditional Hollywood celebrities.
Owning the intellectual property of a well-known historical figure is a powerful asset. Use generative AI to "bring them back" as a virtual influencer. This character can create new content and engage modern audiences, but with the massive head start of pre-existing fame, authority, and credibility.
Business owners and experts uncomfortable with content creation can now scale their presence. By cloning their voice (e.g., with 11labs) and pairing it with an AI video avatar (e.g., with HeyGen), they can produce high volumes of expert content without stepping in front of a camera, removing a major adoption barrier.
The most forward-thinking founders are exploring whether AI enables the entire concept of a company to be redefined. The ultimate goal is a 'super-powered individual' who oversees an army of AI bots to handle coding, marketing, sales, and support, creating a billion-dollar outcome with a single human employee.
The next evolution of influencer marketing will be AI-generated personalities. These "fake people" will combine the durable appeal of intellectual property (like a Disney character) with the engagement model of a human influencer. This will create a new class of celebrity owned by companies and creators.
AI-generated personalities, owned by entrepreneurs, will become a legitimate business securing brand deals just like human influencers. Existing creators should adapt by learning to create their own AI characters to diversify their income streams and stay competitive.
AI tools allow any creative individual to invent and market entire fictional personas. This isn't just a marketing tactic; it's an opportunity to create and own valuable intellectual property (IP), much like a modern-day Walt Disney or Vince McMahon.