Gen AI made Influencer marketing for businesses — Part II, A how-to guide

By Gopi Vikranth and Nandini Mathan

[Part 1] [PartII]

The growing number of AI influencers can be attributed to a confluence of technological and cultural shifts happening in our lives. AR/VR, new gaming tech, wildly popular shows like Black Mirror and Westworld, all showcase a future where digital entities become intertwined with human emotions and social structures, thus fueling public fascination.

Audiences are increasingly seeking immersive and novel experiences that blur the lines between the virtual and the real. At the same time, advancements in AI and Gen AI have enabled the creation of virtual influencers who can interact, create content, and even express “personalities” in ways that are increasingly indistinguishable from human influencers.

Traditionally, this channel was not easily accessible to smaller businesses unless the brand owners themselves were influencers of some renown.

Today, Gen AI can enable brands to create their own influencers and content at a fraction of the cost, time and effort, which are directly controlled and aligned with the brand guidelines and their intended purpose. We showed Eva a travel influencer in part 1 of this post. In this article, we detail how you can create your own.

Creating your own AI influencer

You require a few different tools to bring everything together. On an average, the total toolset costs ~$100 to $200 per month.

Character Creation and Development

This is similar to creating a game character or a hypothetical character in a book. Note that you might have a number of micro influencers, so better not to get stuck with a single archetype. Example: Eva, the travel AI influencer embodies the following characteristics —

Wandering the globe with style and a cause. 🌍✈️ I tell stories about the places I visit and try to travel in a way that’s kind to the planet. Join my journey! #EvaTheExplorer

Generate high-quality images or videos of the AI influencer in different settings, outfits, and poses using text-to-image or text-to-video synthesis technologies. Make sure you create dynamic content that reflects current trends, seasons, ensuring the influencer remains relevant and engaging.

1. ChatGPT — Select a theme, the type of influencer, bio and ask ChatGPT to write this for you : a personality and backstory for the AI influencer with coherent and engaging narrative. Further, ideate the influencer’s characteristics — description of physical appearance, including facial features, body type, and fashion style
2. Midjourney — to create your character (~$30 per month) operates via discord. Keep your seed ID always which can help create consistent images. Create 5–6 images at one go; you can pass these images as reference images to create consistency. Alternatively, if you are a large enterprise, you can use a tuned SDXL running on a dedicated machine, through your analytics or technology teams (you can try this on Scenario)
3. Magnific — For hi-resolution upscaling and detailing, use Magnific. It really does feel like Magic! ($39 per month)
4. RenderNet — Once you have a few images, you can freeze the look, control the pose, and set the composition on RenderNet using FaceLock and ControlNet ($25 per month)
5. RunwayML — for creating short videos and GIFs of your image. Alternatively use Pika to get the same effect ($12 per month)
6. If you want live ads, use Pika Pro to use their Lipsync feature to create a live video of your influencer talking about your brand or a topic. Sora by OpenAI and EMO by Alibaba Group show amazing potential and have great demos you can check online (yet to be released).

At some point in the future, its likely all the tools will converge and there will be one Gen AI product which can do this end to end, however at this time you will have to use multiple tools to make a Gen AI influencer.

Building your community

Building a community and managing an influencer account involves a blend of creativity and strategy.

• Create and share 1–2 posts daily as a business, staying top-of-mind for your audience. Look for trending music on Instagram and other channels that will boost your views.
• Maintain a consistent frequency in posting content that leverages Gen AI, ensuring that the community remains active and engaged. Use a social media scheduler (many options are available).
• Establish a clear brand identity using Gen AI, in alignment with your influencer’s persona by defining what the influencer stands for, and what makes them different in their niche. Embed brand-related content discretely into the posts and enable special offers where relevant.
• Have a community manager who can continuously respond to comments and also engage with followers. These can be augmented with a ChatGPT custom GPT, with added knowledge file from brand guidelines and prior content to capture the tone.
• Build Gen AI driven companions who can constantly engage with your followers (ChatGPT powered bots do a good job at this and they are only getting better).
• Create new communities with different themes or influencers to attract and engage more customers. Once you’ve reached a critical number of followers, consider creating a dedicated chat community on platforms like Discord. This can serve as a space for more direct and personal engagement with your audience

Micro communities and personalized engagement is the future.

About the Authors:

Gopi Vikranth is a Principal at ZS and leads AI SaaS Products and Platforms, Customer Experience Analytics and Personalization.

Nandini Mathan is a product lead at ZS who works with Gopi Vikranth to develop AI-first SaaS Products such as Personalize.AI and Max.AI.

Gopi, along with Arun Shastri, hosts a podcast called “Reinventing Customer Experience”. Gopi and Arun chat with digital, analytics, technology and customer experience leaders from various industries and organizations to understand how they are engaging their customers. The podcast is available on Apple and Spotify.