AI influencers seem poised to disrupt social media. These fictional CGI personas masterfully blend cutting-edge machine learning, viral marketing and imagination. Backed by data showing shifting consumer sentiment and booming growth, I believe synthetic media will profoundly expand the very notion of virtual celebrity in coming years.
As an aspiring tech founder fascinated by these intersections, I created this comprehensive 2,000+ word guide so you can start brainstorming and building your own AI-human hybrid influencers.
Grab a coffee, put on some music, open your favorite writing app – and let‘s dive in!
The Rise of Fictional Influencers
In 2022, more than 500,000 influencers made careers monetizing videos for engaged, loyal fans. Combined they‘ve earned over $3 billion from paid brand sponsorships and affiliate deals.
But a new class of entirely fictional CGI influencers threaten this human dominance…
Meet Imma. She‘s a free-spirited photographer, selling NFT snapshots minted on blockchain. Or Thompson, a suave French model repping luxury brands.
These compelling, photo-realistic personas exhibit sophisticated style. They jet set to fashion shows, collaborate with artists, and mix effortlessly in circles of fame and success.
But here‘s the twist: they don‘t actually exist.
Rather, Imma and Thompson sprung from the creative minds at startup Brud. Using AI and 3D animation, Brud manifests imaginary characters online – blending invented backstories and digital effects into influencer fame.
And brands buy in, sponsoring CGI model posts just like their human counterparts.
"Virtual beings are an extraordinarily powerful way to tell stories," Brud CEO Trevor McFedries told Forbes. "You can talk about issues in ways you previously couldn‘t."
Make no mistake, synthesized personas aim to make authentic emotional connections with real people.
So far it seems to be working. Collectively, Brud‘s first breakout AI influencer "Lil‘ Miquela" engages over 3 million passionate followers.
But Brud is just one early player. A PwC report forecasts virtual influencers earning $13.8 billion by 2026.
As consumers increasingly prefer authenticity over expertise in recommendations, quirky CGI personas somehow feel more genuine.
And with generative AI rapid-advancing hyper-realistic photos and videos, anyone can now create their own influencers – like Imma and Thompson – using just a laptop and internet connection.
I‘ll break down exactly how step-by-step shortly. First, let‘s cover why now is the perfect time to unleash your own AI-human.
Why You Should Launch Your AI Influencer
Historically only big studios could finance high-end CGI capable of producing believable virtual beings. Imagine the multi-million dollar effects budgets for Princess Leia in Rogue One or young Robert De Niro in The Irishman.
But as synthetic media algorithms evolve, photorealistic rendering and animation get democratized.
In 2015 researchers premiered a primitive machine-generated video of Barack Obama speaking. It took expert-level coding and weeks of processing on supercomputers.
Mere months ago the same feat happens near instantaneously with text-to-image diffusion models like Stable Diffusion and GPT-3 speech generation.
So why should you launch your own AI influencer brand right now in 2023?
-
Generative AI is unlocking creativity for anyone: finally writers, designers, and creators have intuitive tools to bring imaginative characters to life.
-
Consumers demonstrate appetite for virtual beings: 62% of Gen Z and Millennials recently surveyed follow at least one CGI influencer.
-
First mover advantage remains: While forecast models predict explosive growth, we‘re still early. Less than 0.3% of sponsored influencer posts involve AI personas per HypeAuditor data as of this writing. You have room to establish presence and notoriety.
-
Monetization paths keep expanding: Brand collaborations yes, but don‘t forget NFT art sales, metaverse events, digital fashion lines, tokenized access passes. We‘re just scratching the surface of business models supporting virtual creators.
-
The tech only gets better: I expect future hybrid algorithms that say, analyze your Spotify playlists to auto-generate CGI music videos starring your AI influencer persona jamming on themes matching your taste. Content creation leaps from months to potentially minutes.
So in summary – consumer demand exists, monetization seems inevitable, but barriers to quality CGI generation drop daily. Seize this window to launch your AI influencer and together we‘ll shape culture itself at the intersection of algorithms and imagination.
Let‘s dig in on exactly how to wield these emergent generative creative tools…
Step 1: Create Quality Source Assets
We‘ll leverage consumer-grade AI services for compositing and animation. So quality assets prove critical for convincing results, mainly:
A Sharp, Well-Lit Source Face Photo: The algorithm will graft this face onto CGI bodies so fidelity matters. Have the person gaze straight-on, neutral expression against simple background. Avoid heavy shadows over features or face-distorting camera angle.
Target Persona Videos: Next we need foundational lifestyle, poses, voices to base CGI animation on. Search Instagram, TikTok and YouTube for influencers that aesthetically match your envisioned persona in hair, makeup, wardrobe and mannerisms.
Save short clips exhibiting natural poses and speech covering diverse contexts your AI may encounter: dancing, chatting over coffee, showing off art in a studio, unboxing clothes.
This gives animation algorithms integral samples to train on. Actively curate media spanning likely scenarios for your persona.
Optional but powerful: Capture Custom Poses, Backgrounds and Footage tailored to your AI‘s emerging brand identity. Show them pursuing expressed interests… practicing martial arts, DJing at a club, playing piano. AI generated scenes often prove less convincing than footage grounded in reality.
Let‘s bring everything together into an initial digital human…
Step 2: Generate Base CGI Image
Leading AI image generators like Craiyon and Stable Diffusion now synthesize shockingly photorealistic faces and scenes.
We‘ll tap Craiyon for establishing our base CGI render. It offers an intuitive text-to-image interface requiring no coding or downloads.
Here‘s how to generate your foundational AI influencer portrait:
- Navigate browsers to Craiyon site
- Upload your high quality Source Face Photo
- Upload a few Target Persona Photos exhibiting desired body type, clothing styles and poses
- Compose text descriptive prompt summarizing key attributes. Example: "Realistically rendered 3D CGI brunette woman smiling wearing pink shirt and jeans in loft apartment holding a guitar"
- Hit "Generate Images" and pick most convincing composite
Review results critically. Do eyes align correctly? How is skin texture and lighting consistency? Try adding or removing prompt terms related to age, ethnicity and styling seeing impact on output quality.
This step establishes realistic facial features we‘ll next seamless graft onto animation.
Step 3: Swap Face onto Video
While Craiyon CGI looks impressively sharp, it still appears slightly "off" as a still image. Our minds better accept unrealistic effects embedded into moving footage.
Let‘s utilize machine learning powered face swap to plant rendered headshots directly onto foundational videos. Frame-by-frame neural graphing smooths blending for true photorealism.
I recommend using the GFP-GAN bot available free through Discord. It harnesses powerful generative flow algorithms for convincing facial transfers:
- Join the GFP-GAN Discord server using invite code
- Upload your quality Source Face Image
- Provide links to short Target Persona Video clips featuring similar body type, age, ethnicity
- Run the bot script processing face swap
- Download final render with source face convincingly grafted onto each target clip!
Review closely for any artifacts in tracking or distortions from extreme facial angle shifts. Re-run using secondary videos as needed until satisfied with clip quality.
Also generate multiple output options trying different target footage contexts – walking city streets, dance club, beach vacation etc. This supplies key animation samples for next steps breathing CGI fully to life…
Step 4: Animate Speech & Motion
Thus far we created a realistic still portrait through AI image generation, then mapped it onto moving target clips via face swap. Now comes animating our CGI influencer to speak, gesture and walk completely originally based on our creative direction.
I suggest Synthesia for streamlined video rendering. Their enhanced machine learning models require only scripted dialogue and minimal pose references to automatically simulate full speech patterns, lip syncs, blinks and head movements.
And it keeps getting easier. Synthesia‘s latest "Text to Video" workflow removes needing any pose footage. Simply type a script and AI generates everything:
- Visit Synthesia.io and create account
- Upload your realistic Face Swapped Videos
- Enter dialogue lines for AI to perform with proper lip sync timing
- Download final render of your CGI influencer seemingly speaking content!
With just an uploaded image and text prompt, Synthesia algorithms handle full facial expressions, gestures and body language – no fancy cameras or performance capture required.
I does take practice finding prompts that yield natural looking results. Start with short scripts and build up complexity as you better understand model capabilities.
Step 5: Craft an Appealing Backstory
At this point we established a strong technical foundation actually rendering the CGI footage. Now focus creative efforts on an inner world and external narrative that emotionally resonates with audiences.
Who is this character you‘re bringing to life? What unique essence do they channel through the visible social media facade?
Of course interests and quirks help round them out. Are they an aspiring musician or cutting-edge designer? But look deeper:
- What motivates their dreams and goals?
- What personal setbacks and adversity did they overcome to reach this point?
- How will they navigate looming challenges towards ultimately achieving redemption and success?
Study great storytellers. Lucas. Rowling. Tarantino. The most compelling arcs tap into universal themes we each relate to on some level.
Create an off-platform journal capturing your CGI muse‘s rich inner world across years of life experience – both before and after those snapshot moments visible through posts.
This grounds every caption, video and depicted scene into a purpose-driven, multidimensional being audiences truly bond with.
Step 6: Strategically Grow Your Audience
Congratulations, your hyper-realistic AI influencer now exists on social media! Though the world doesn‘t know about them quite yet…
With backstory established and initial CGI assets rendered, committing consistent time every week towards community growth and engagement becomes a priority.
Set a posting schedule for new videos or other content types. Use relevant hashtags. Like and thoughtfully reply to others in your niche.
Research successful human influencers studying what engages their followers and attracts brands. Apply similar data-driven strategies balancing authenticity with consistency.
Pay particular attention to feedback around your CGI persona after the first 25-50 posts. What reactions are most common? What types of content performs best? Any indications on how consumers perceive authenticity or value?
Use these early learnings towards honing both inner narrative and outer visible activity online.
While grow rates depend heavily on your niche, a good goal is 25-50 highly engaged new followers per week in the first year. By year two an influencer with regular posting cadence and consistent voice should have no issue expanding up towards the 1000+ follower ranges.
Patience pays off building any personal brand – human or AI powered.
Ethical Considerations
As emerging generative tech enables creating increasingly photorealistic CGI identities, we must thoughtfully consider associated risks and moral implications.
While still primitive today, we know algorithms grow exponentially more capable week-to-week. It doesn‘t take much imagination to foresee concerning near-future use cases:
- Non-consensual identity theft hijacking someone‘s likeness
- Deepfakes that falsely depict words or actions of real people
- Fictional personas spreading misinformation framed as truth
- CGI utilized for dangerous propaganda or state-level psyops
And while currently CGI faces still appear obviously "off" upon close inspection, how long until everyday webcams and smartphones capture images convincing enough to enable credible impersonation?
Yet despite these valid worries, categorical AI fear-mongering proves counterproductive, often rooted in old paradigms.
Yes potential for harm exists, but might tremendous good also come by thoughtfully wielding these generative tools?
What if CGI acted as positive change agents – or digital therapists providing health services at massive scale?
Or enabled novel story formats transcending physical limits helping marginalized groups finally make their voices heard?
My take: Society must avoid reactionary "ban first, ask questions later" mindsets while urgently discussing policies around synthetic media, deepfakes and CGI identity – likely seeing new federal laws proposed in coming 1-2 years.
In the meantime I suggest all AI influencer creators proactively self-enforce reasonable guardrails:
- Brand fictional personas clearly as CGI, disclosing use of technology
- Seek consent before directly depicting any identifiable individual
- Consider indirect societal impacts – could content dangerously manipulate certain groups?
- Participate in industry ethics talks creating standards as tools continue evolving quickly
While virtual beings represent new wildcard elements entering the cultural equation, a balanced critical perspective focusing solutions-first and compassion over blame remains imperative as algorithmic capacity grows.
The Future Beckons
And with that we come to the conclusion of our guide building realistic CGI influencers on social!
Hopefully you feel energized imagining possibilities vs overwhelmed by technical complexity. Soon these steps develop into intuitive habit through hands-on experimentation.
What awaits around the corner? Perhaps an Instagram populated 50% by fictional CGI personas and interactive VR influencers living natively across connected metaverses.
Yet in whatever synthetic future unfolds, real authenticity endures. That magical spark behind truly impactful voices. The nexus of radical creativity and compassion.
So develop your skills wielding these emergent tools not just for sights, sounds and engaging stories – but also convey timeless messages that leave audiences better than found.
The world needs your special voice. Our shared journey continues…
Now press upload on that first video! 😉