Good morning, welcome to AI Joe, the newsletter that’s more radical than a waterskiing squirrel.

Here’s what’s on today’s agenda 👇️ 

Main story

• AI Influencers are taking over the internet 👩 🤖 

Other stories

• AI helps quadriplegic man 👨‍🦼 

• Google adds new AI functionality to search 🔍️ 

AI content of the week

• AI-generated South Park episodes ⏯️ 

How you can use AI this week

• Get a professional headshot using AI 📷️ 

AI Influencers are taking over the internet 👩 

AI influences are making a splash, gaining millions of followers, and doing massive brand deals with some of the world’s most iconic brands.

The first fictional influencer to hit the mainstream is named Lil Miquela; she was created in 2016 as an Instagram profile. In Miquela’s first 2 years on the platform, she gained over 1 million followers and today has 2.7 million. Lil Miquela however is not an AI influencer, she had to be created using CGI and while we don’t know if the team behind her is using AI today, we know that the first time around, it took some real work to create her. Now with AI, it’s much easier to create characters like her, and she’s inspired the rise of many AI influencers.

Miquela has done deals with massive brands like Prada and Calvin Klein and was valued at $144M in 2021.

Read more about Lil Miquela

The rise of AI means the rise of AI Influencers

We’re seeing dozens if not hundreds of AI influencer accounts pop up across social media today and it’s just the beginning. AI influencers are here to stay.

rpnickson

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The question is, do the followers of these AI influencers know they’re not real? Do they care?

Based on the comment sections and tweet replies, it seems that most of these followers have not realized these influencers are AI-generated.

Vicki Verano, an AI-generated influencer “from the Jersey Shore” has gained nearly 60,000 followers on Twitter since joining in March. If these accounts are able to grow this quickly and have this many eyeballs they’re sure to be valuable properties.

Advertising executive, Ted Murphy, founder of IZEA, a global influencer marketing firm was interviewed about how these influencers will impact the business.

Other executives in the influencer marketing space pointed out that these influencers will give brands a higher degree of control over their messaging. They don’t need to worry about controversial opinions that could harm their brand. On the other side of the coin, if the AI influencers never move beyond just posting images, they may have a difficult time impacting the culture.

While there is some risk that an influencer can hurt a brand’s image, if they have no personality or opinion, it is difficult to influence consumer behavior.

In order for these AI influencers to gain valuable followers that move the needle for brands, the influencers will need to have storylines and be generally interesting.

Joe’s Takeaway: Though this feels dystopian, I believe that AI influencers will remain a small sub-segment of the influencer space. With that said, I also believe we’ll have an AI influencer who is a household name within the next 10 years. Like everything else, the best quality will emerge on top, but there will be thousands (maybe millions) of AI influencers that have a small presence online. We’ll eventually get used to it being a part of our everyday social media consumption.

Read more about the rise of AI Influencers.

AI helps quadriplegic man move and feel again 👨‍🦼 

This is the incredible story of Keith, a man who suffered a catastrophic injury after diving into a shallow pool. For 3 years Keith was completely paralyzed from the chest down. He had no feeling at all in his arm or hands.

Thanks to the incredible research by Keith’s doctors and the power of AI brain implants, Keith is now able to move his arm simply by thinking about it.

Joe’s Takeaway: Healthcare is at the frontier for AI. We’ll continue to hear about incredible breakthroughs in drug discovery, medical devices and so many more areas. The ability to help people by using our newfound AI superpowers is one of the most exciting parts of this revolution.

Read more about how AI helped this quadriplegic man move and feel again.

Google adds more AI to search 🔍️ 

It’s not just “Bard,” Google’s AI chatbot that will leverage AI. Traditional search is getting AI features too.

Videos and images added to AI-generated answers

Sometimes a search can be answered better with an image or a video. For example, if you’re trying to get stains out of your marble countertops it may be valuable to give a text description of the step-by-step process AND a video overview.

Joe’s Takeaway: This functionality is likely inspired by TikTok. Gen Z has been reported to search TikTok rather than Google for things like restaurant recommendations, product reviews, tutorials and lots more. Using multiple media types to answer searches quickly is the only way for Google to keep its dominance in search.

Read more about the upgrades Google is making to AI search

AI-created South Park episodes are here!

Don’t be fooled!

So far these episodes are not nearly as good as a classic human-created one, but they are incredible. This is an incredible leap forward because these episodes are a combination of images (animation), text (script) and audio (voices), all perfectly combined to make something that looks and sounds like an authentic episode.

We’re moving toward AI content that’s as good as the original at break-neck speed. I predict an AI movie will win an Oscar within a decade. 🏆️ 

Read more about the AI South Park episodes.

How you can use AI this week

Get a professional headshot with Remini

• Go to the App Store and download Remini

• Follow the app instructions to get set up

• Enable the 1-week free trial (be sure to cancel before the week is over)

• Give Remini access to your photos

• Select “AI Photos”

• Select 8-12 photos of yourself to train the model

• Pick your gender

• Select a model from the “Curriculum” section

• Wait 5-10 minutes and you’ve got your new headshot

@meili_zzz

Replying to @Alexis here’s a tutorial! #aiphotos #aifilter #remini #reminiapp #aifiltertutorial #linkedinheadshots #aibabyfilter #linkedin... See more