The Bible had plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness and the death of the firstborn. The year 2026 has a new plague: the fake influencer, designed by artificial intelligence. And it’s coming for our entertainment and our politics.
Over the past week, I’ve been captivated by two pieces centered on the rise of these counterfeits:
- The Verge reported on the phenomenon of AI-generated posts of influencers pretending to be at the Coachella music festival.
- The New York Times reported about the proliferation of AI-generated influencers supporting President Donald Trump across popular social media, many reading from the same (awkward) script.
On the surface, an influencer making money from a Coachella post when they were nowhere near the concerts and a political influence operation reliant on non-existent Trump backers may not seem to have much in common.
But they do. They highlight the new perils of AI’s ability to generate extremely realistic pictures and videos that can fool the masses and have potentially far-reaching ramifications for our economy and our democracy.
My upshot: Be extra careful sharing or believing influencer content online. This is true especially if you agree with the message or if the message makes you angry. Rage-sharing is still sharing. Don’t help these individuals or groups deceive your fellow Americans.
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The Coachella Con
At The Verge, Jess Weatherbed took stock of the online content related to what is formally known as The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in California.
“A quick scroll through my social media feeds has already shown me many uncannily attractive figures in glitzy outfits, posing for perfectly staged photographs with celebrities,” Weatherbed wrote. “Only some of these content creators aren’t really there. They don’t even exist at all outside of our screens. They’re generated using AI tools.”
Yes, some of the accounts acknowledge being artificial. But others do not, or do not do so consistently. Some of them have tell-tale glitches that identify them as AI. But many are good enough to garner thousands of followers and millions of views.
“Any influencer coverage of a pop culture event can feel performative these days given the chance to monetize any such opportunities,” Weatherbed wrote. “But the involvement of fake influencers, with no clear disclosures, feels like it’s taking advantage of people who are unable to attend events like Coachella in person.”
Made-up MAGA Mob
At The New York Times, Tiffany Hsu documented a more insidious phenomenon seeking to influence political outcomes: a surge in AI-generated fake influencers apparently designed to “hook conservative voters.”
Hsu’s report features a sampling of 10 videos in which a very diverse cast of computer-crafted figures all read from the same script. “The Left say (sic) Republicans aren’t United…that’s funny because I bet I can get a Trump supporter from every state to comment.”
None of the accounts the Times reviewed self-identified as AI-generated.
“It’s not clear who created the A.I. accounts, and determining whether they are the product of a hired content farm, a foreign influence operation, an experiment or something else is difficult,” Hsu reported. “They all agree, however, that creating such avatars is becoming easier, especially for contractors and marketing companies that now specialize in developing and dispatching AI avatars in bulk for increasingly low prices.”
When it comes to politics, Hsu noted, “A.I. can meaningfully shift voter opinion.” In this instance, one person can generate what it used to take an entire production team to make.
That sort of scale – and the lack of national regulations to date – means AI could be a kind of public opinion nuke in economics and politics. The death of the firstborn led Pharaoh to release the Jews from Egypt. What will the death of reliable videos release?