Brands Employing AI-Created Influencers on Social Media

Brands have reportedly begun using artificial intelligence-generated influencers to promote products on social media.

That’s according to the results of an investigation by The Guardian published Sunday (June 21). The U.K. newspaper says these findings indicate that companies are using AI to generate content that purports to be an actual customer experience without letting people know the customers are AI inventions.

The report noted that there are no regulations in the U.K. that mandate companies inform consumers that ads feature AI-generated content. New European Union rules set to go into effect in August will require AI-generated or manipulated content like deepfake images, audio and video to be labelled as such, but that rule won’t apply in Great Britain.

The report also includes comments from the U.K. consumer group Which? arguing that consumers should be clearly informed when ads feature AI-generated influencers.

“Our recent investigation into deepfakes on social media found that a worrying 70% of people are unable to correctly identify all the real and fake videos we showed them, meaning consumers could be frequently being misled by AI-generated content and becoming targets for scammers,” said Lisa Barber, editor of Which? Tech.

“It is concerning that consumers are not able to trust the content they are seeing online. Companies must be transparent when content has been created using AI, particularly if AI-generated influencers are appearing in the content.”

The news comes days after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance legislation designed to curb the spread of unauthorized AI-generated replicas of individuals.

The Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, would create a federal intellectual property right covering a person’s voice and visual likeness.

“This bill is about protecting what’s most personal to us, what makes us us: our voice and our likeness,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., one of the bill’s sponsors.

He argued that advances in AI have made it possible to develop convincing digital replicas that depict people saying or doing things they never said or did.

This technology can also be used to carry out financial fraud, as PYMNTS wrote earlier this month. While synthetic identity fraud is not new, AI has brought it to a new level.

“A synthetic borrower in 2026 may arrive with a convincing driver’s license generated by image models, employment verification supported by AI-written HR correspondence, and a live onboarding video featuring a deepfake face synchronized with cloned speech patterns,” that report said. “Some fraud operations are reportedly generating entire digital footprints.”

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