Brands using AI-generated influencers to promote products on social media
TL;DR
A Guardian investigation says brands are using AI-generated influencers on Instagram that look like real customers, often without obvious disclosure. Examples include Once, Maket and Ashle. Reality Defenders assessed some posts as likely AI-generated; Ashle removed several images after being contacted. The UK Advertising Standards Authority says its rules do not explicitly require AI ad content to be labelled, unless the ad itself becomes misleading.
Nauti's Take
This is the next trust break in performance marketing: first authenticity became an ad format, now it is being automated. Brands using AI influencers should label them clearly, full stop.
Anything else is not just a creative test; it is the deliberate use of a perception gap. The NDA angle makes it worse: if the campaign only works while people are kept from knowing how it was made, the problem is not disclosure friction, it is the business model.
Briefingshow
The issue is not AI in advertising itself, but fake social proof. When a crying bride, an unboxing clip or an everyday customer is synthetic, trust is being simulated. For brands this is cheap and scalable, but for users it makes it harder to tell genuine experience from engineered performance.
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