The announcement of Alba Renai as presenter of Survivientes has created discomfort. Alba Renai, a 24-year-old from Madrid who likes to travel, eat and do yoga, according to her Instagram profile, which has 11,800 followers, is not real, but has been generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Nor do the spectacular models that starred in the last campaign for Llongueras or in the latest BMW spot exist. The Spanish industry of AI-generated influencers is starting to emerge.
Presenters, models and virtual influencers have been around for years. Lil Miquela in 2016 was the first virtual influencer to take a prominent position and run advertising campaigns. Almost a decade later, the production processes of these creations have been reduced and localized, while becoming more realistic. Behind Alba Renai is the creative agency Be a Lion, subsidiary of Mediaset España. The parents of the models in the latest Llongueras campaign are Diana Núñez and Rubén Cruz, founders of the first Spanish AI modeling agency, The Clueless, in Barcelona.
Núñez and Cruz founded a communication agency a few years ago that did not end up working. The small companies that hired them could not afford the budgets presented by the agency, which for a shooting needed to have different professional profiles.
Therefore, they decided to embark on the design of a virtual model with tools available to anyone, such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and Chat GPT. This is how Aitana was born, the first Spanish AI influencer. "Now, instead of two people, we are seven, and we have hired two computer programmers to create our models with our own technology," explains Cruz. "In May we will launch 30 new creations that bet on the diversity of sex, gender, age, ethnicity, functional capacities...", he adds.
One of the biggest advantages of these influencers, according to the creators, is the interaction with the audience. "They have triple the engagement of the real ones", says the director of branded content and experience of the agency Be a Lion, Luís Movilla. "Despite the fact that she does not have a very high number of followers, about 27,000 in total if you add the TikTok and Instagram community, the interactions generated by Alba Renai are higher than those of an influencer with 300,000 followers. "The economy of influencers generated by AI moves about 4.6 billion dollars and predicts a growth of 26% in 2025", he concludes.
"Aitana López's income streams come from three sources: collaborations with brands, content on OnlyFans and conversations on Telegram," explains Cruz. Talking to Aitana on Telegram costs 9.99 euros per month. It costs 7.50 euros per month to subscribe to his Fanvue channel – a channel similar to OnlyFans – where users can receive his images and hear his audios, so much of his income comes from his image hypersexualized
One of the most widespread criticisms of virtual influencers is that they promote impossible beauty ideals. "We didn't invent anything - explains Cruz -. "The influencers with the most followers are beautiful women. We wanted to make a model that all the brands wanted to work with. At first we created two, one was Aitana, with a very normative physique, and the other had a more inclusive aesthetic that didn't work for us, but now we're going to make a strong commitment to diversity," he adds.
The image of Alba Renai is born from a study of its target audience, Spaniards aged between 18 and 24, and questionnaires to hundreds of young people to define their physical features and their values. Movilla explains that from the beginning they have worked with the University of Málaga to draw up a code of conduct for it with the aim that there would be no discrimination for reasons of sex, ethnicity or age and that it was in tune with the values of its generation
"It's a social problem amplified by technology," points out algorithmic ethics expert Patrícia Ventura. "Technology reproduces the sexist biases that exist in society because it trains with the data and images that are already there. Without control, technology reproduces and increases stereotypes", he adds.
Another criticism that virtual influencers receive is about the confusion arising from some users who may think they are interacting with a real person. In this sense, the Artificial Intelligence law that was approved in the European Parliament in mid-March requires specifying that they are simulations. Both Aitana López and Alba Renai's profiles have this clarification on their profile, but what happens when their images or videos circulate without context on social media channels?
"It should be specified in absolutely all the contents, in accordance with article 52 of the Artificial Intelligence law of the EU. And they should also indicate which companies are behind these virtual influencers. That's how the law defines it", explains Ventura. "However, the underlying problem is the anthropoformization of technology, that is to say, giving human form to these creations generated by AI. This encourages fear towards technology and the narrative that it is smarter than humans and will one day replace us. Technology is designed by people and should serve to make us a better and more dignified life", he adds.
Hiperia is the first virtual presenter of RTVE, but her appearance, at the beginning of 2023, did not create any kind of controversy, unlike what happened with Alba Renai. The character, voice and script of this show are generated by AI and the main goal is to explore new narratives and formats. "Hyperia is not hyper-realistic in order not to provoke internal or external rejection. We don't want it to be seen as a substitute for any RTVE professional, and we also don't want to get into controversies, so it doesn't deal with political information, for example, but instead deals with things that interest everyone, such as culture," he explains the innovation director of RTVE, David Corral.
Virtual influencers have an advantage: they don't need to rest, which has led to the rejection of many professionals towards these emerging figures.
"Alba has not arrived to take away anyone's job, but has been created ad hoc to see how citizens would perceive a presenter generated by AI and a format has been created for her", explains Movilla. "There are 32 people who work at Alba. In total, four new jobs have been created and twenty professionals have been trained", he adds.
