London’s Top Minds in influencing got together. These are their Top 3 takeaways:

“Put your hand up if you have knowingly interacted with a virtual influencer",Clare Dobson asked the audience. A few hands went up.

“Put your hands up if you not knowingly interacted with a virtual influencer?” Some hands went up, some went down.

“Is anyone following a virtual influencer right now?” Out at the back, three hands.

Clare is the global platform and influencer lead at Wavemaker. Her job is really to work with top global clients helping them reach audiences on global platforms with a particular focus in influencer marketing. She’s there, basically, to help them push the boundaries, to move forward and think about innovating all the time.

And that’s why she was here too, on this morning of the 14th of May in the Lumiére London underwood. She was delivering the keynote in front of the managers of household brands, great cutting-edge agencies and content creators we love.

This was the kick off to “AI: Hype or Reality ? The future of Creator Marketing” an exclusive event where handpicked guests gathered for some honest, unfiltered conversation, and insightful talks.

Here are some things we learned.

Hype: the Virtual Influencer is coming.
Reality: the Virtual Influencer is already here.

Clare Dobson’s keynote mindboggling facts like 35% of respondents to one US survey purchased a product recommended to them by a Virtual Influencer. Over the last five years, Virtual Influencers have closed deals with Ikea Japan, been signed up by talent agency CAA and even played Coachella!

For brands, the fact that these influencers don’t age, don’t sleep and (perhaps more importantly) don’t have scandals is a powerful plus.

For consumers in Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they provide entertainment, company and community. These young people are increasingly online, plugged in 24/7: 1 in every 2 of them would trust an influencer as much as they trust their parents.

Clare frames it in a way that makes it easier for us olds to understand:

For a kid born into this generation, the prospect of them bumping into Binky Felstead is just as likely as bumping into DJ Angelbaby. So why should they consider them all that different?

Clare’s conclusion? As the Virtual Influencer market blossoms and as these young people start to get buying power, it will be worth A LOT. By 2030, it will already be worth around 111 billion.

Hype: the basic infrastructure of Influencer marketing means it’s unscalable.
Reality: you need to whatsapp Universe.

It is a fact that until a very recent past, Influencer Marketing was hard to scale. We’ve written about it here - and here.

TL;DR: a lot of other Marketing Channels you can put more money in, gain more eyeballs. Almost without having to increase your team. WIth influencer marketing, growth has been very hampered by the fact that to start scaling up investment in Creators, you’ve always had to hire A LOT of people - so we’ve seen things like:

• Super-talented Agencies refusing to pitch for big clients because they’d have to double in size overnight (and just think what happens if the Client decides to pack their bags six months later?)

• Big brands scaling back on Influencer Marketing to more programmatic advertising, which has less results and doesn’t create a lasting community but it’s easier to throw cash at.

Enter Universe. AI agents like this will be shifting the equation—not by replacing humans, but by multiplying their output. The critical insight that most miss is that any new technology must adapt to human workflows, not the other way around. Which is why Universe works in your WhatsApp or Company slack.

Hype: Some Creators are rushing to use AI in the fear of becoming outdated. Others are terrified they will be replaced.
Reality: Both have a point?

The real threat isn't AI replacing creators, but having revenue stolen by deepfakes, algorithms deciding who gets discovered, and losing hours to creator briefs that can be shortened to minutes with the aid of AI tools.

The strategic move isn't choosing sides.

It's understanding that AI is a leverage multiplier, not an identity replacer.

The creators who win will treat AI like any other tool.

As Callum Ryan said in his roundtable:

“I absolutely love AI. It’s literally my lifeline at the moment. Not to take the creativity from myself, but to spark some ideas. But I’ll always give it my touch and make it more me.”

Ellie Boatman, professional rugby player, says she uses AI to get the boring but necessary parts of the work out of the way fast:

“It’s more about how productive it makes me in terms of caption automating and things like that.”

She says: As someone who trains full-time, has four hours of training to do, then obviously finding ways to make things as efficient as possible are important.

But “I’ve grown my audience and my brand in women’s rugby in a very raw way, and so fans want to see me on my instagram and TikTok pages be very human”.

This is the final insight we’ll leave you with: the more artificial the space becomes, the more authenticity will matter.