I Tricked the Internet with an AI Influencer

TL;DR:

Yikes conducted a 30-day experiment to create an AI influencer using tools like ChatGPT and MidJourney. The experiment highlights the potential and challenges of AI-generated influencers in social media.

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Takeaways:

🌟 AI influencer creation: Yikes designed April Isabella using AI tools, mimicking the success of Lil Miquela.
📸 MidJourney for image generation: MidJourney helped craft realistic images, but initial tools like DALL-E fell short.
🗣 AI for engagement: ChatGPT managed responses, but genuine human interaction remained missing.
📈 Platform expansion: April struggled on YouTube and TikTok, highlighting limitations of AI in growing an audience.
🤖 Key lessons: AI can generate content quickly, but lacks human authenticity for real community building.
🎥 Efficient content: AI created videos efficiently, but quality content and engagement still rely on human creativity.
👥 Future of AI influencers: Authenticity, emotion, and genuine connection are still the main advantages of human influencers over AI.

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Yikes’ AI Influencer Experiment:

Yikes, a popular YouTuber with over 1.06M subscribers, embarked on an ambitious experiment: to create an AI influencer completely run by artificial intelligence. Inspired by the success of Miquela Sousa—better known as Lil Miquela, a fictional AI influencer created in 2016—Yikes set out to explore whether a fully AI-controlled character could gain traction and followers on social media.

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The Experiment: Creating April Isabella

The first step in Yikes' journey was to create April Isabella, an entirely AI-generated influencer with a carefully crafted persona. April was depicted as a quirky, vinyl-collecting, plant-loving young woman, designed to fit the typical social media "influencer" mold.
Using tools like MidJourney V5 for image generation and ChatGPT for writing captions and responding to messages, Yikes created a believable online presence for April.

But the process wasn’t without its challenges. Yikes initially tried using DALL-E to generate images but found the results less than satisfactory. Switching to MidJourney V5, Yikes was able to generate more realistic images, showcasing April in various influencer-like settings—at the gym, hanging out with friends, and even posing with Starbucks cups to nail the "quirky white girl aesthetic."

Yikes used ChatGPT to handle April’s interactions, such as writing captions, generating hashtags, and even responding to DMs, ensuring that everything about the influencer was AI-driven.

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Social Media Engagement: The Results

One of the biggest challenges Yikes faced was creating engagement for April's Instagram account. In the early stages, April's posts gained little traction beyond bots and automated likes. This highlighted an essential reality: while AI can create content, generating real engagement and growing a following requires more than just automation.

Yikes also experimented with expanding April's presence to other platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Using AI tools, Yikes created fully automated videos for YouTube, including quirky drama content often seen in influencer culture. April’s persona was rebranded for YouTube as a "drama influencer," producing videos about popular online figures such as MrBeast and Ariana Grande.

However, even with daily uploads of AI-generated content, April’s YouTube channel struggled to gain significant traction. Yikes noted that while the process of creating these videos was quick and efficient—each video taking just 15 minutes to produce—April’s account only managed to secure a handful of followers.

The same pattern repeated on TikTok, where Yikes followed trending challenges and sounds to create content, but still couldn’t crack the code to viral success. Despite producing 10 TikToks, only three managed to garner any views, leaving April’s account with just five followers.

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Key Learnings from the Experiment

Through this 30-day challenge, Yikes uncovered several important lessons about the intersection of AI and influencer culture:

1. AI can create, but it struggles to engage: While AI tools like ChatGPT and MidJourney are capable of producing lifelike content, building genuine engagement on social media requires a human touch. Automated interactions, while seamless, often lack the spontaneity and emotional connection that draw in real followers.
2. Authenticity still matters: Social media audiences are increasingly savvy. While AI can mimic human influencers, the lack of real-world authenticity can be a barrier to building a loyal community. April's posts, though convincing, couldn't maintain the same level of personal connection that real influencers achieve.
3. AI-generated influencers face growth limitations: Despite the hype around AI influencers like Lil Miquela, Yikes' experiment highlighted that AI influencers still face hurdles in scaling their online presence. Real influencers benefit from spontaneous interactions, storytelling, and deeper emotional engagement—qualities that AI is still learning to replicate.
4. AI excels at quick content creation: One of the strengths of Yikes’ experiment was the speed and efficiency with which AI tools created content. From writing captions to generating photos, April's content pipeline was extremely fast. However, speed does not necessarily equate to success when it comes to building influence.

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Yikes’ Conclusion

In the end, Yikes' experiment didn’t result in the viral success many would expect from a social media influencer. April Isabella may have garnered a modest following, but the experiment served as a critical case study in the capabilities and limitations of AI in the social media landscape.

Shoutout to Yikes for pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI and social media. His insightful approach to creating an AI influencer provided valuable insights into the future of digital marketing and AI-driven content creation.

Check out Yikes’ full video titled "I Tricked the Internet with an AI Influencer" on his YouTube channel to see the complete journey unfold!

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Q&A Section:

1. What was Yikes’ experiment about?
   Yikes aimed to create an AI influencer using tools like ChatGPT and MidJourney, automating content creation and engagement for a social media persona named April Isabella.

2. What tools did Yikes use for this experiment?
   Yikes used MidJourney for generating images and ChatGPT for writing captions and responding to social media messages, making the influencer appear more realistic.

3. Why didn’t April Isabella gain many followers?
   Despite being AI-generated, April lacked the emotional connection and authenticity that are crucial for building real engagement on social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

4. What are the limitations of AI influencers?
   AI influencers struggle to replicate human spontaneity, authenticity, and emotional engagement, making it difficult to foster a genuine community of followers.

5. What did Yikes learn from the experiment?
   While AI is great at producing quick, automated content, building a loyal audience requires more than just efficient content creation—it requires authentic interaction.