“There are stories that don’t exist”, said the good Maccio Capatonda in one of his notes. In this case we could say “There are people who don’t exist“. It is the case of Aytana Lopez25-year-old Spanish influencer with pink hair and over 150 thousand followers with just one small flaw: she doesn’t exist.
Aitana, in fact, is nothing other than an image created by artificial intelligence. So well done that a well-known actor even asked her out on Instagram, I don’t know that I’m flirting with an AI chatbot. And this certainly seems like the subject for a Maccio film.
“It can be done”
Aitana presents herself on social media as one of the many influencers who inhabit our Instagram feeds every day. She is young (she is about 25 years old, counted in the binary system obviously), beautiful, pink hair and many followers. Parent? Ruben Cruzfounder of the agency The Cluelesswhich used artificial intelligence tools to bring to life a virtual model that looks real.
A scene that we imagine as that of Doctor Frankenstein screaming “it can be done” before giving life and soul to his creature.
The agency decided to create Aitana because it was tired of human, opinionated, demanding and capricious influencers.
“Aitana was born so as not to depend on other people who have egos, who have quirks, or who just want to make a lot of money by posing,” Rubén Cruz told Euronews.
The experiment immediately proved to be a huge success on social media, with Aitana having now surpassed the threshold of 155.000 followers su Instagram. Numbers which obviously turned into sponsorship agreements with brands, with posts that went on to be worth over $1,100. Not only: Aitana also decided to show herself in risqué photos on Fanvue (a platform very similar to OnlyFans), where for a fee it allows users to admire its hardware and intimate source code.
According to Cruz’s statements, Aitana would bring The Clueless over $11,000 a month.
An agency created an AI model who earns up to $11,000 a month because it was tired of influencers ‘who have egos’.
Aitana López is an AI-generated creation by a Spanish agency that grew tired of booking real models.
López can make just over 1,000 euros, or $1,090, per advert… pic.twitter.com/IkL8n6ahJo
— Dragomir Voicu (@VoicuDragomir) November 27, 2023
Aitana Lopez wins the heart of an actor (but raises important ethical doubts)
It is always Cruz who tells us how Aitana also fell in love with a well-known Latin actor, who asked her to go out together in Instagram DMs.
“One day, a well-known Latin American actor wrote to her to ask her out,” Cruz said. “This actor has around five million followers and some of our team watched his TV series as children. He had no idea that Aitana didn’t exist.”
Aitana is an example of how artificial intelligence is changing the world of influencer marketing. From the point of view of The Clueless, the solution is absolutely winning: using an artificial intelligence image generator to create influencer photos results in significant savingsconsidering the cost of working with a human celebrity.
It is there however the ethical (as well as legal) aspect to take into consideration. After all, this is a rare and brazen example of i technologyArtificial intelligence used directly to replace human labor. Not only that: it is good to remember that generative artificial intelligence models are based on real content and images. Aitana is therefore the result of an accurate algorithmic synthesis which however starts from real photos of real women (popular or not).
Furthermore, the use of artificial intelligence to replace actors was a key theme of the Hollywood actors’ strike this year, with members of the SAG-AFTRA union strongly opposing such operations. Thus, the urgency of a regulation that vindicates the right to personality is increasingly affirmed.
Just a few months ago, a dentist’s office used an artificially generated image of Tom Hanks to create a commercial without the actor’s consent.
In the meantime, Aitana Lopez continues to gain followers, and The Clueless continues to make millions.