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virtual influencer
also AI influencer or CGI influencer or virtual social media influencer
Definition of virtual influencer
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: a computer-generated fictional persona that publishes social media content, interacts with an audience, and performs roles associated with a human influencer, often using AI to create its appearance, voice, posts, or replies
- The fashion campaign hired a virtual influencer whose photos and captions were produced by a small creative team.
- The platform required the AI influencer to disclose that the apparently personal product recommendation came from a synthetic character.
Two meanings, one word
In everyday English
An influencer is a person whose online audience can shape attention, opinions, or purchasing decisions.
In AI
A computer-generated fictional persona that publishes social media content, interacts with an audience, and performs roles associated with a human influencer, often…
Origin & history
Virtual influencers emerged as recognizable social media characters in the 2010s, initially through computer-generated imagery and human-managed storylines. Generative image, video, voice, and language models later made the personas cheaper to produce and more capable of frequent or interactive content. Marketing research now uses virtual influencer as an umbrella term for these computer-generated endorsers, whether fully human-directed or partly AI-driven.
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Cite this entry
"Virtual influencer." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/virtual-influencer/. Accessed 12 Oct. 2026.