The Rise of Fake AI Influencers

Fake AI influencers are becoming more common as a way to promote your own products.

Wellness Maddie is one such example. She is an AI-generated person who pushes supplement products on Instagram and TikTok.

She has a large following of real people. She boasts 291.4K followers on TikTok and 565K followers on Instagram.

AI Tools for Content Creation

Wellness Maddie uses different AI tools for her content creation process.

She uses Midjourney for images and Heygen for video. She uses Elevenlabs for voice and Manychat for automations. Automation tools allow for messages to be sent at scale and help convert commenters into customers.

She promotes a newsletter called "Women's Health" and Rosabella Moringa supplement on Amazon. Her profile links directly to the supplement on Amazon.

Each post would take all of 20 minutes to make using AI.

Content Strategy and Tactics

Her videos use user-generated content (UGC) style with a talking-head video. UGC is content that looks like it's made by a regular person. This makes the video appear less like an ad.

Her strategy uses comment-based lead magnets. This means that you comment on her posts to get a freebie.

On TikTok, most comments know its AI. On Instagram, most comments are clueless.

On December 1st, 2024, a popular post got over 22.8 million views with 470,116 likes and 377,538 comments. That is very impressive!

She uses 2 calls to action (CTAs) in each video. One CTA asks for a comment to get a free recipe, like "lemon balm." The other CTA asks you to join her email list. CTAs are what marketing professionals use to encourage an action.

When I commented on one post, I received a DM (direct message) that was a ManyChat conversation. Currently, the DM links to the supplement, but ManyChat has many automated actions. It can send specific messages depending on what you comment. This way a content creator can promote multiple products using just comments as a personalized thing.

ManyChat can increase income by 3-5x if you set it up correctly. It is very personalized. It feels like you are having one-on-one conversations at scale.

Older people do not check their DMs as I saw one comment mentioning that they never got a lemon recipe even after their comment. So, there is a drop-off rate there. But, it is a good opportunity for those that know how to check their DMs.

This can be solved with a "check your DM" comment that Link in Chat uses.

Unethical Practices

Wellness Maddie isn't a real influencer and doesn't show real results. Instead, she uses fake stories.

Also, she pretends to be a medical expert. In one video, she claims to be a gynecologist. In another, she's a nutritionist. In yet another video, she's a dietitian.

She even uses the same face for her mother, but ages it. Sometimes, her mother is a gynecologist. At other times, she is the highest-paid plastic surgeon in Brazil.

Her use of AI creates a deceptive and unethical persona.

This isn't an isolated case. Many accounts use AI influencers to sell supplements. It's a new trend, since you can make many videos for very little money.

Some reuse content from platforms like Reddit. Others create a real person using AI to push for sales. They use "expert" claims to sell questionable products.

Business Angle

Creating AI influencers can be profitable. You can sell AI influencers to brands as a side business.

Comment automation and CTAs drive sales. Some also use AI of their own face to promote their low-cost offer to generate leads for their other expensive products.

These fake AI talking-head videos allow anyone to create videos now. For example, you could create an Instagram account that promotes 250+ issues from Startup Spells using an AI video tool. The cost of this is cheap and the scale it has is impressive. Now, a person can do this using a fake female AI avatar with a soothing female voice as it converts better.

Or you can use your own face but with a fake AI clone of you. Many content creators like Varun Mayya already do this on 90% of their videos.

Varun Mayya uses HeyGen for the visual clone, and Eleven Labs for the audio, with custom fine-tuning to achieve a nearly identical representation of his likeness.

In 2025, I expect agencies like Media Scaling that get 1 billion guaranteed views in 180 days will do this for big business clients like HubSpot and launch 100s of Instagram and TikTok accounts.

These AI influencers pose an important challenge for consumer trust. Exploit it while you can before social media closes this loophole by requiring to add an AI label.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

This rule is insane but true!

My own account on X got shadowbanned/ghostbanned because someone I know used to engage in Crypto Engagement Rings years ago and this person switched to his 2nd account to talk to me.

So all of us got caught. His other friend also got his account ghostbanned and there is absolutely no recovery as I've tried everything for 3 months.

It is a pain to open a 2nd account and social media ban is real even though I'm not even mildly controversial.

Also, do not open DMs from spammy/scammy accounts as I always love talking to people so I talked to a whole lot of spammers/scammers/engagement rings. This might be another reason why I was caught.

This does not include the top influencers with a massive following.

2/

I have seen this with friends. The vibes in the room entirely shift when a person with personality is in there.

Heck, my best time in classes were definitely with some of these personality hires. The entire vibe of the classroom changed due to a few people.

3/

Software developers could quote insane pricing to non-technical people who thought programming was hard so it costs that much.

You could get away with charging $10,000 for a simple landing page and there are people who paid for it.

But now they can do it on their own for <$100 and it is only going to get cheaper.

Rabbit Holes

1. How to Get MILLIONs FREE Traffic with Flipboard by Julian Goldie SEO

2. We 10x-ed screenshotapi.net and sold it by Andrew Pierno

3. How to AB Test Ideas with Meta Ads by Validated AI

What’d ya think of today’s newsletter? Hit ‘reply’ and let me know.

First time? Subscribe.

Follow me on X.

More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Coca-Cola's Christmas Marketing Strategy (LINK)

2. Cold DMs on Reddit (without getting banned) (LINK)

3. Hilarious Instagram Growth Hack (LINK)

4. Social Engineering in Clubs (LINK)