With 3 million Instagram followers, Lil Miquela is the world’s most popular virtual influencer. I’m usually interested in new commercial outputs, which might be attributed to my financial background. The advent of new technology or new items has enormous economic ramifications. Virtual influencers like Lil Miquela, in my opinion, are totally commercial outcomes. And the occurrences on Lil Miquela bring some thought to the reality behind the “real”, which appears to be something to be considered.

Commercial Value & Development

Lil Miquela is a digital influencer made with motion graphics, which companies have long been capable of producing. Even though she isn’t an actual AI creation, her popularity has motivated venture capitalists to invest extensively in virtual creators and collaborate with entrepreneurs to develop the technology. There is money to be made for those who are successful. Lil Miquela has collaborated with leading labels such as Supreme and large department shops such as Barney’s. She might not be real, but the money is.

Virtual character is a vertical market that operates in the second dimension. Of course, the amount of Gen Z is massive, so the possibility – or “money” – is enormous. Previously, Hatsune Miku from Japan had produced huge profits comparable to those of a superstar, and these benefits spread across countries. Simultaneously, it may gain not only from performing arts, but also from the derivative chain, such as idol peripheral items, engagement in cinema and television works, or becoming a significant component of theme parks, which can boost market value. Furthermore, because the characters of virtual idols are not easily broken, they are more stable than real idols. It is possible to become a lasting idol without aging as Doraemon did.

There are also others who believe that soon, virtual characters will require no human intervention at all. These characters would subsequently be able to communicate with individuals on Instagram and Twitter according to machine learning abilities. It’s not a wholly novel concept but overcoming the issue of programming healthy human-bot relationships is challenging.

Technology

Miquela is a creation of Brud – a transmedia studio that makes fictional characters who live in the real world. Essentially, she’s modeled on a person and then animated over the top, but when she’s talking to you and me, she believes she’s a robot. Digital people can be used in entertainment, finance, healthcare, fast-moving consumer goods, and many other fields.

People found entertainment value in Lil Miquela even knowing she wasn’t real, and “huge advancements” in neural networks enabled computers to construct “almost indistinguishable” characters. Epic Games introduced MetaHuman Creator in early 2021, which is aimed to swiftly construct incredibly realistic artificial persons that can be driven and rendered in real-time in Unreal Engine utilizing motion capture technology.

Ethical Ramifications

Miquela follows the 3 elements of influencers, much like operating real influencers: selling characters, selling social media, and selling big brands.

Lil Miquela’s creator gave her a personality and a story. Consider her a sentient robot. A magazine even invited her to write an article about how to succeed in the fashion industry. She made fun of herself as a robot and advised others not to put their trust in social media, where nothing is “real.” Many of the concerns that arise in today’s age of social media are addressed by Lil Miquela: Is reliability still needed? And what is real? Lil Miquela also stated that she feels empathy from her followers and is eager to share her creativity with them, which she thinks is enough. It’s real for her. Personally, I think this is quite reasonable. The purpose of idols, whether real or virtual, is to satisfy the emotional needs of fans.

However, to retain the audience’s interest, influencers must constantly create topics. However, the Miquela team’s following attempt to make Miquela more “real” utterly failed. 

It all started when Miquela posted a YouTube video describing her experience of being sexually harassed in the back seat of a Lyft trip. She narrated the experience in front of the camera, much like other real influencers. Everyone knew Lil Miquela wouldn’t have the same experience as a digital character, so the marketing strategy drew a lot of criticism. There is even less reason for marketing on such an inflammatory issue. While there have been a lot of sexual harassment accusations with ride-hailing apps in the news in the previous, Lil Miquela may have gone too far if she chose to make herself more “real” in this way. After all, sexual harassment is a serious issue that should not be disregarded carelessly.

The control of the scale of “reality” is the problem of Lil Miquela’s falling reputation: success is also real, and failure is also real, which is the fact that Miquela must face as a virtual character. This also reveals that, while the pursuit of reality is undoubtedly important in the creation of a virtual character design scale, excessive pursuit of reality cannot provide stable success – especially in the copying of some unpleasant incidents.

• Some thoughts after reading

After reading the article about AI works going to auction, I had some other thoughts about virtual idols, about ethical ramifications. The debut of AI works at auction has drawn a lot of attention and controversy since the works created by technology are compared to the works created by humans, which makes people feel unfair and puts the value of humans into question. The general public believes that art generated by technology cannot be compared to the worth of true art, and I also agree with it. I believe that when synthetic art confronts human values and achievements, it will spark a lot of debate since we believe that the value of producing something meticulously by a person cannot be compared to the value of high-tech automatic manufacturing. It’s as if I sent a birthday card instead of a birthday message.

As an example, I have a buddy who works at a TV station, and there was a national singing competition with amazing judges and participants that drew a lot of attention from the public. The most intriguing aspect was that one of the participants was a virtual idol who achieved 4th place. Other participants’ supporters thought it was extremely unfair, and there was a strong debate on the Internet over whether technology could compete with people for resources. People cannot comprehend computer-produced music since this type of competition requires vocalists to sing. My friend said it was only a promotional stunt. However, from the perspective of the competitors, virtual idols take a lot of resources and chances that should be theirs.

Regarding the ethical ramification, my previous analysis was stand on the product operation, on the side of people who make the money. However, when compared to human values, virtual influencers have a strong impact on the market of real influencers. When it comes to the stability and controllability of characters, virtual influencers are the first option for many companies. However, this is also unjust to real influencers, since, because it is human, the operation of an IP will be more complex and difficult.