Today, many people (and brands) want to “influence.” But the pressure to be consistent, stay visible, and constantly interact with audiences can feel overwhelming. Not to mention, some are put off by the thought of revealing their names, faces, or identities online.
Now with the rapid rise of AI and other creative tech, brands and creators are using digital characters called “virtual influencers” to build audiences, tell stories, and sell products.
While some people feel uneasy about this Black Mirror-type of future, others believe it’s a logical evolution of influencer marketing. Whatever the case, virtual influencers have already become a reality. Some have thousands of fans and even make money from advertising and subscription-based content.
In this article, we break down what a virtual influencer is, why it’s working, and how it’s being monetized so you can decide if you want in.
What Is a Virtual Influencer?
A virtual influencer is a digital character with its own personality, backstory, and online presence. Created to behave like a real influencer, it can build a following, offer fan subscriptions, and collaborate with brands.
Some influencers look like cartoon characters, magical creatures, and aliens, while others are designed to look and act like real people. In fact, you might even be following virtual influencers without realizing it. These influencers can “attend” digital events, post daily updates, and recommend products much like humans do.
Examples of famous virtual influencers
Here are a few examples of virtual influencers with a large audience.
- Aitana Lopez is a realistic lifestyle influencer portrayed as living a normal young-adult life. She’s into fitness and gaming, takes selfies, and has a dedicated fan base on Fanvue.
- Nobody Sausage is an animated sausage who creates funny, trending short-form videos and has over 7 million followers.
- Zlu sits on the edge between human and alien. Zlu “lives” in France, focuses on fashion and art, and even partners with international brands.
- Lil Miquela is a fictional Brazilian-American model and musician who has received brand endorsements from fashion houses like Calvin Klein and Prada.
How are virtual influencers different from other digital characters?
Virtual influencers share commonalities with avatars, brand mascots, and AI bots, but they’re not the same.
Computer-generated imagery (CGI) mascots usually refer to brand characters, such as Colonel Sanders of KFC. Mascots exist to represent the brand. They typically don’t have an ongoing storyline, opinions, or “public life.” That said, with the right strategy, you can develop a mascot into a virtual influencer.
Avatars typically represent a real-life person’s identity, personality, and story. They stand in for someone real, and you’ll often see them in gaming or live streaming.
AI chatbots serve as personal assistants created to help and support users. They don't have a story, audience, or public presence.
Why Virtual Influencers Are Successful (and Why They’re Not Just a Trend)
The global virtual influencer market size is expected to reach $45.88 billion by 2030, growing at 40.8% between 2025 and 2030.
Let’s look at why it’s blowing up and isn’t just another fleeting trend.
Helps you stand out in a crowded online space
As the influencer economy grows, standing out has become increasingly difficult. According to recent research, the human avatar segment dominated the virtual creator category, accounting for 68% of its revenue. But these characters often compete directly with millions of real, human influencers creating similar content.
That’s where more distinctive or stylized virtual influencers can cut through the noise more easily. Characters that are exaggerated, unexpected, or clearly fictional—like Nobody Sausage—are instantly recognizable and often more memorable.
Scales content and audience interaction without burnout
Virtual influencing isn’t just an outcome of AI hype. It’s a logical response to the pressure human creators face to post constantly, stay relevant, and avoid mistakes.
Because let’s face it: creators who start “3 reels per day” challenges are likely to burn out very quickly. It’s exhausting to maintain an internet presence, live a picture-perfect life, or keep exaggerating life challenges for the sake of storytelling.
Virtual influencers can do all this, and at scale, without relying on a single human’s time and energy. They can “be” in more than one place at a time, share regular updates, and need no downtime or vacations.
Reduces costs
Virtual influencing removes many of the expenses tied to human creators. For example, you can use AI-generated photos and host digital experiences without paying for travel, accommodation, photo studios, makeup artists, and many of the other logistical costs required for human influencers.
Offers consistent branding with lower reputational risk
Virtual influencers are intentionally designed with characteristics, personalities, tones, and messaging that fit your audience and stay consistent over time. There’s a lower risk of human error or scandal. So unlike human influencers, these virtual characters are less likely to get cancelled overnight for doing something off-brand.
Lets you influence without personal exposure
Many people want to share their creativity, ideas, and businesses with the world, but aren’t ready to show their faces or personal lives online. Virtual influencing lowers that barrier, creating a layer of separation that allows creators to thrive without feeling self-conscious.
For example, one Reddit user wrote, “The thing is — I don’t like being in front of the camera. I’m not great at speaking or communicating. But I do have a lot of skills and knowledge in my field that I’ve built over the years. So for someone like me, a virtual influencer could be really helpful. The knowledge would be mine, but the words and presentation can be done by AI.”
Most importantly, people build real connections with virtual influencers
There’s a common misconception that people can’t build authentic relationships with something “artificial.” But if you think about it, people have always formed emotional connections with fictional characters from books, movies, TV series, comics, and games. Virtual influencers fall into the same category, and their large followings reflect that.
It’s no surprise that Aitana's fans want to connect with her in a realistic way—view her daily life, slide into her DMs, and even exchange voice notes. And she successfully executes all this using tools like automated messaging and AI voice calling on Fanvue.
How to Create Virtual Influencers
Virtual influencers can be created in various ways. Some are manually animated using CGI, while others are powered partly or fully by AI. With the development of quick and easy AI tools like Creatify or APOB, many creators now favor AI-led or hybrid approaches to creating virtual influencers.
Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to create a virtual influencer.
1. Develop the character concept
Not all virtual influencers become popular. Like characters in books, films, or games, some characters are loved by audiences, while others fall flat or are even hated.
A compelling character has a clear purpose. So before creating visuals, think about:
- Who the character is
- Who the audience is
- What the character’s story is
- Which niche they belong to
- What kind of content could they create
2. Lock in on a look
Once your concept is clear, you need to create the influencer’s visual identity. If you want it to appear human-like, it needs to look very realistic, so avoid animated or “plastic” visuals unless that effect is intentional.
You can use AI image generator tools, such as OpenAI's DALL-E 3, Midjourney, Flux, or Stable Diffusion, to generate a base image. Detailed prompts and reference images can also help AI build features that align with what you imagined.
3. Create image variations
Consistent visuals help audiences recognize and connect with a character. Aitana Lopez (@fit_aitana) is a great example; she looks like the same “person” in every post.
But achieving this consistency is challenging. Early attempts often see changes in facial features, body proportions, expressions, and other “physical” traits.
After finalizing the look, generate multiple variations in different angles, emotions, and lighting conditions. As a rule of thumb, aim for at least 15 usable images—those that match the original features exactly. Larger libraries offer better consistency over time.
4. Automate visual consistency
Once you have a library of reference images, you can use them to train your AI model. Here are two ways to do this:
- LoRA Training. Advanced creators use tools such as Tensor.art or Civitai to train a LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) model. By uploading 15–20 image variations, you can create a portable LoRA file that keeps the character consistent across tools, poses, and environments.
- Character-locking in end-to-end platforms. Platforms like Influencer Studio, OpenArt, or Glambase use your reference images to create a character and “lock” it in place. It’s less flexible, as you can only generate images within that platform, but it’s much easier to use than LoRA training.
5. Give your influencer a voice
Strong virtual influencers aren’t just about the visuals. The character needs their own personality, voice, opinions, and values. The most successful profiles establish preferences, routines, and ongoing narratives—including drama—that build emotional connections with an audience.
For example, Imma Gram, a Japanese virtual influencer, has favorite foods, owns a dog, and even has a younger brother—and these remain consistent over time. That's how detailed the storyline can be.
Finally, every virtual character needs a unique voice that matches their personality, age, and “vibe”. Tools like ElevenLabs let you choose from an existing library, clone voices, and even test pacing, emotion, and delivery.
Once your character is fully developed, you can start creating photos, videos, and other content for their social media accounts.
How Virtual Influencing Works
In practice, virtual influencing looks very similar to traditional influencer marketing, with a few key differences behind the scenes.
Content formats and creative direction
Virtual influencers create (and appear on) a wide range of content formats, depending on their niche and positioning. Here are some examples:
- Lifestyle photos and vlogs set in restaurants, gyms, and everyday environments
- Stylized images resembling professional photoshoots for products like clothing and accessories
- Short-form clips like food recipes or even full-on music videos—Noonoouri, for instance, is a virtual influencer with a real music career
The possibilities are endless.
And just like humans, virtual influencers share these across a variety of platforms—from socials like Instagram and TikTok to fan platforms like Fanvue.
Managing a Virtual Influencer
Virtual influencer accounts are run the same way as human influencer accounts. They have content calendars, schedule posts and stories, and engage with followers through comments and direct messages.
Although virtual influencing is getting closer to being entirely automated, we’re not quite there yet.
Behind the scenes, virtual influencers are typically managed by human creators and brands that:
- Curate content
- Create storylines
- Manage brand partnerships
- Collaborate with other influencers
It's possible to create a virtual influencer solo. But as you scale, you’ll likely need additional support to manage your socials, mirroring how human influencers build teams to manage their growing online presence.
That said, if your virtual influencer is on Fanvue, you can use the built-in AI tools to do all the admin for you. This way, you don’t need to hire (or spend on) team members, and can keep the full pie for yourself.
How Virtual Influencers Monetize
Virtual influencers can monetize in several ways.
Brand partnerships. Virtual influencers, especially those with large followings, secure brand deals similar to human influencers. They’re paid to mention brands, host walkthroughs for games, review apps, and even feature products in photos or videos, such as wearing branded clothes and accessories.
Affiliate marketing. Virtual influencers can also earn through affiliate links or promo codes. It's an easy way to start monetizing a small account.
Licensing their image. Brands may pay to use a virtual influencer's looks and character in their content: social media posts, ads, and campaigns. This monetization method works well for famous influencers such as Lil Miquela.
Paid subscriptions and exclusive content. Many virtual influencers use platforms like Fanvue to build real fan communities. Fans pay for direct interactions, subscriptions, and even pay-per-view access to exclusive content. The best part is you don’t need to become “big enough” to make money via brands. Even a small group of loyal fans can generate income.
How Virtual Influencers Are Shaping the Future of Content Creation
The world is divided over how virtual influencers fit into the future of the creator economy.
Some worry that they’ll “take business away from human influencers,” while others feel they’ll “always lack authenticity for most brand categories.” And then there are those who believe “the influencer pie will also grow,” and there is a space for everyone.
I tend to agree with the latter. Looking ahead, as tech continues to improve, virtual influencers are likely to become more common.
And success won’t hinge on whether a creator is human or virtual. Instead, it’ll depend on connection, consistency, and a sense of ownership—qualities audiences already respond to.
A well-designed, consistent virtual influencer can feel just as familiar and trustworthy as a human one if the character feels stable and reliable. Fanvue reflects this shift by giving both real and virtual creators tools to build direct, authentic relationships with their audiences.
Final Thoughts
Virtual influencers are already attracting large audiences. They have real careers, advertising contracts, brand deals, and can even generate income through direct fan support.
Their success isn’t accidental. Virtual influencers work best when they’re treated as creative projects, rather than gimmicks or shortcuts. And success hinges on clear concepts, strong storytelling, and consistent visual representation.
When done right, they can monetize like human influencers while also addressing gaps where humans fall short—costs, scalability, and control over their public image.
As the creator economy grows, connection and consistency will matter more than whether a creator is virtual or human. Those who create emotional bonds with their audiences will see the most success.
Ready to connect your virtual influencer with a real audience?
