In less than two decades, social media has transformed marketing and advertising to the point where an entirely new career option is open to those who enjoy spending time in front of the camera. However, the job of social media influencers has long since stopped being just a lucrative side hustle.
These days, it’s an increasingly demanding full-time career that can require significant personal and financial investment. As we enter the age of AI, does this present a career risk or a potentially transformative opportunity for the multitudes of individuals who earn a living from social media?
Becoming a successful influencer depends on multiple factors, not all of which are within the scope of control. The choice of niche will play a significant role in the chances of achieving success, with industries such as travel, cooking, or gaming already extremely saturated by social media accounts competing for attention.
Of course, there are still ways to get noticed, namely by posting enough high-quality content to get noticed by enough people and get boosted further by the algorithm.
However, creating high quantities of content is challenging when a single piece of quality content can take around a day to produce. High-quality content increasingly also requires more specialist equipment, such as professional cameras and lighting, along with state-of-the-art kits and Instagram-worthy backdrops relevant to the chosen niche. Overall, along with the time involved, a single minute of video can end up costing thousands to produce.
Furthermore, any influencer will point out that creating the content itself can be the least glamorous and potentially even the least time-consuming part of the overall job.
Depending on how much help the influencer may have in running their account, they also need to spend time liaising with brands and sponsors about campaigns and content, writing captions, researching optimal hashtags to target, promoting the content across multiple platforms, handling comments, and engagement, tracking analytics and performance, and more.
The X Factor: Influencer Authenticity
With the effort involved, it’s hardly surprising that many firms outsource their own social media management to agencies. Meanwhile, influencers themselves are becoming overloaded with the effort involved in juggling their many responsibilities, with around two-thirds saying that they suffer from burnout badly enough to affect their mental health.
Now, the presence of AI represents both a threat and an opportunity. A majority of influencers surveyed believe that AI will present at least a small threat to their business due to the increasing rate of AI-generated content and digital influencers. However, around one-third of influencers also said that they’re already using AI in their creative process to some extent.
What if, instead of watching the rise of AI from the sidelines with the risk that brands will simply choose an option that renders them obsolete, influencers harnessed digital twins to level up their productivity and online presence, proving they’re still the best bang for the branding buck?
Research shows that Gen Z might be put off by the lack of authenticity in generic AI digital influencers and that authenticity and trust are prized above all—even if AI is involved. In this respect, influencers can perhaps make better use of digital humans that mirror their own trusted brand to their audiences, creating more of a connection than with a generic digital avatar designed by a corporate firm.
The tools needed to generate high-quality, photorealistic avatars are now becoming more accessible thanks to companies such as Antix, which enables anyone to create and customize their own digital human. An influencer can sign up for Antix and create their AI avatar, select preferences, and create customizations based on user-provided data. The result is a hyper-realistic digital twin that integrates seamlessly across social media, gaming, and metaverse platforms.
A Virtual Partner
Harnessed in this way, the Antix digital human isn’t a replacement for the influencer or their content but a complement to it—and one that enables more efficiency in managing a social media presence and the demand for a constant pipeline of content.
For instance, an Antix human could manage all the engagement and interactions with a post, carry out Q&A sessions, or generate material that it’s not possible for the human influencer to create, such as adapting existing content for audiences in other languages.
Unlike a generic digital influencer who is unknown to human audiences, these digital humans work alongside their human influencers, who can help to ingratiate the new arrival with their established followings.
As a career that emerged from the digital revolution, it’s hardly surprising that influencers are among the most susceptible to digital and social media-related burnout. However, influencers don’t need to fear the new, AI-enabled era of change when they can harness AI and add it to their arsenal of tools and equipment.
In doing so, they can ensure that they continue to attract and manage their followings and generate additional value for their partner brands.
