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Are there negative impacts of virtual influencers on real people?

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https://science.howstuffworks.com/virtua...encers.htm

EXCERPTS: . . . While they're still a nascent phenomenon in the U.S., virtual influencers are already a major marketing tool in Asian countries...

[...] "Today we can use generative machine learning (AI) to create photorealistic artificial bodies, faces and voices automatically and so-called 'deepfake' technology to substitute the face and/or bodies of anyone in a video," Bentley continues. "This means the creation of virtual influencers becomes considerably easier. Eventually AI will be able to generate bodies and behaviors without human actors; however, getting them to say and do the right thing at all times may still need the help of humans for a while."

Additionally, creators of virtual influencers have begun to utilize AI to create a new generation of increasingly sophisticated influencers capable of interacting with followers...

[...] As the technology evolves, virtual influencers someday might be able to respond in something closer to real time to humans. But if they eventually become a ubiquitous part of everyday life, it's still unclear how our interactions with them might affect us. A June 2022 study, published in the journal New Media and Society, found that viewers' parasocial response to virtual influencers — that is, their one-sided relationship with a media persona — doesn't differ significantly from their response to influencers who actually are human.

[...] There doesn't yet seem to be a lot of research specifically focusing on virtual influencers' effect on users. But a study published in January 2022 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, which looked more generally at social media influencers, found that for young women in their teens and twenties, browsing influencers' images was associated with dissatisfaction with the viewers' own bodies.

Bentley is concerned that "the unrealistic bodies of influencers may lead to more eating disorders and body dysmorphia in those who substitute real human interaction for this form of fake 'relationship.'"

It's not hard to imagine future AI-powered virtual influencers having a powerful effect upon followers by utilizing virtual reality and advances in haptics, a type of technology that stimulates the senses of touch and motion. But AI's ability to simulate human-like emotions could be even more potent.

"Humans are remarkably adept at seeing human emotions and feelings in almost anything, so greater realism is not always required," Bentley says. "Indeed, the 'uncanny valley' effect that we see in robotics can be evident in virtual influencers too — the more freedom we have to interact with and observe an artificial entity, the more realistic its behavior needs to be, otherwise it might start to appear a bit robotic or freaky. For that reason, sometimes it's better to have a cartoon-like character where our expectations for behavior are not so demanding." (MORE - missing details)
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