No, this AI model isn’t making €10,000 a month as a model: how an upstart conned dozens of gullible journalists
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In the last couple of months, much e-ink has been spilled about Aitana Lopez, an AI-generated model supposedly making over 10,000 Euros a month as a model for brands. Sites like The Daily Mail, Business Insider, Forbes, and Arstechnica have all creduously reported on Aitana and her supposed modelling success.
Pretty amazing, you might think. There’s one problem: it’s BS.
The modelling agency behind Aitana, TheClueless.ai, first started posting on Instagram on October 26, 2023:
Their website, TheClueless.ai, first went live around this time as well. The Internet Archive’s first archive of the website, from October 27th, shows a sparse website, and says “The Clueless is an AI modeling agency”. Hours later, the website is updated and encourages readers to “contact us with your project details, and we will match you with the perfect AI model from our diverse portfolio”.
The very same day, somehow this newly opened AI modelling agency is already getting attention in El Periódico, a local newspaper in Spain.
Ruben Cruz, one of the co-founders of TheClueless.ai, tells El Periódico that Aitana is earning an estimated 4,000 Euros a month selling lingerie photos, not modelling for brands. Erotica is the only thing that “supports all of this”, he says. “We depend on her because there’s no brand that dares to do it”.
Just 4 days later, Ruben Cruz is, strangely, singing another tune. He tells a local radio station that “Aitana earns around 4,000 euros per month on her social networks for photos with brands.”
The next day, there’s an explosion of articles about Aitana, many in English.
One Spanish news site writes “Some sources claim that she earns 5,000 euros a month from collaborations with brands.”
A few weeks later, the other co-founder of TheClueless.ai, Diana Nunez, tells Euronews.com that Aitana earns “just over € 1,000 per advert” and that Aitana can earn up to €10,000 a month, “but the average is around €3,000”.
Nunez tells Fortune that “most of this money comes from social media ads”.
If you’ve been paying attention, Aitana went from supposedly making an estimated €4,000 a month selling lingerie photos, to, days later, €4,000 a month for “photos with brands”, to, a month later, an average of €3,000 a month mostly from “social media ads”.
What brands is Aitana modelling for, then? Euronews claimed in late November that Aitana “has recently become the face of Big”, a mid-sized Spanish sports supplement company.
Mysteriously, you cannot find the “face”, or body, of Aitana on the Big website at all. Nor can you find her on their Instagram, Youtube, or Facebook.
The extent of Aitana’s connection with Big appears to be a referral code that gives 10% off supplements.
Big has an affiliate program for influencers that gives them a 10% commission. The bar to becoming a Big affiliate is not high: one affiliate has just 2,600 followers on Instagram. The referral code has since been deleted from Aitana’s Instagram bio, suggesting it wasn’t making much money.
Aitana, clearly, is not the face of Big nor has she modelled for Big. I have found no evidence that Aitana has modelled for any brand.
Aitana is certainly not making “up to 10,000 Euros a month” for “photos with brands”. But is Aitana really making thousands selling rather tame AI generated lingerie photos on Fanvue, an Onlyfans alternative with a much smaller userbase? It’s possible, perhaps, but Aitana’s creators have clearly shown a loose relationship with the truth. It’s not exactly uncommon for Onlyfans models to claim to be far more successful than they are, the “fake it until you make it” strategy. Aitana’s Fanvue only started in mid-September, about a month before TheClueless.ai was telling the press they make an estimated 4,000 Euros a month.
Despite a complete lack of evidence of any paid modelling, The Telegraph claimed that Aitana was “Spain’s hottest model” and that she “reportedly makes up to £9,000 a month” for her modelling work. LBC claimed that “some of the world’s most infamous fashion brands feature on Aitana’s social media feed - from Victoria’s Secret to Brandy Melville and Guess”. The Times claimed Aitana “earns an average of €4,000 (£3,454) a month for her work and is sought after by brands and event organisers to promote their products”. The New York Post claimed the “Spanish model makes $11k a month”.
How did dozens of journalists and writers, some from seemingly reputable publications, come to believe that an AI model who hasn’t modeled for any brands was somehow making thousands every month doing so? Why did they credulously engage in free promotion for this AI model, their paid lingerie site, and the dubious new company that created her?
On the StableDiffusion subreddit, many users called BS on Aitana. One user suggested that you can pay to have a story on a top news website and “other news websites copy and paste it like a chain reaction”.
Perhaps there’s another explanation: in our current digital age, many publications pursue clicks and engagement over upholding the traditional principles of truth and accuracy. Digital journalism, driven by a demand for clicks and trending stories, can hinder journalists from thoroughly verifying information before publication. As a result, it’s increasingly up to amateur writers to do the job that journalists used to do.
