Idea #13 - AI Influencers & The Metaverse

In today’s idea discussion, we looked at Lil Miquela - a self-proclaimed robot living in LA with over 3 million+ followers on Instagram, who in reality is just a CGI-rendered avatar.

The phenomenon of AI generated influencers paints a bleak picture of our future where computer generated avatars (who lack any real talent of their own) are bagging brand deals with companies like Prada and Samsung but nevertheless, we can remain hopeful as they use their popularity to shed light on important socio-political issues too.

More on the background of Lil Miquela can be learned about from this video.

The conversation then extended into the shockingly realistic humanist tech of Metahumans, made on Unreal Engine an app that allows you to create fully rigged digital humans in mere minutes - you can watch this video to see how eerily technology has advanced.

We ended the discussion on a lighter note by watching Daler Mehndi’s first-ever performance at Metaverse, which is another off-shoot of this AI-crazed future that we’re heading towards (but hey, at least a VR performance of Tunuk Tunuk seems like a perk).

Leaving this discussion with a few questions:

Are AI influencers the next big thing?

How can we leverage services/softwares like Unreal Engine?

Are robots actually going to take over?

Written By: Shweta Singh

Curated By: Hetvi Kamdar