Every few months someone gets a death certificate dominantAnd this summer it was the Spanish’s turn. Controversy expresses the debate about the end of an entire chain dominant And RoRo, accused by another creator of copying her, lost the most followers on TikTok in a week. Meanwhile, an AI-generated French extravaganza has racked up millions of views and has become the most imitated and perhaps ephemeral business on current social networks.
remove influencer. This Frenchman punching the air is Jean Phil. His first known video on Instagram is dated September 17, and his look is unmistakable: pageboy-style blond hair, curly mustache and checkered suit. Eight days later, he had more than 228,000 followers and his own cryptocurrency, JEANPHIL, with an estimated capitalization of $8.8 million. His English counterpart Archibald Browne had 110,000 followers and coin too.
money By October 1 the numbers continued to grow: more than 75 million views on Instagram alone and a peak of more than $12 million for the token, although it had already dropped to just 3 million on the same day. It was then revealed that the account was operated from Belgium and that it had changed its username six times. This Monday, profile gene_philanthropy No longer available and you need to look like this jeanphilanthrope.co.
Formula. Since then, dozens of influencers have imitated Jean Phil’s steps, copying not only his curious exterior (with old-fashioned suits and crazy hairstyles on top of everything), but also his financial motives. On this thread profit: 9.9 million views and $19,433 in profit (figures are Twitter estimates). And one detail that seems obvious with all these imitators: they work as a visual gag that lasts a few seconds, not as an effort. influencer real
What is business? The creator of Harold Puddington, for example, sells a course on creating your own character bios. influencer By AI, though there have been plenty of tutorials on YouTube for setting one up with the Higgsfield AI. One doubt that is always there is whether or not all these products are promoted: that video tutorial, for example, has a link to Higgsfield in the video description and warns that making money is not guaranteed.
In fact, Higgsfield himself has been promoting his Earn program for weeks, which pays to publish content created with his character studies. The company assures that it has already crossed $1 billion in annual revenue. Who is making money in this chain? Perhaps, more than anyone else, whoever sells the tool, as it were already startup That army proposal dominant Synthetics, in the previous wave of events, were more realistic and recognizable.
Another way is crypto. If we talk about cryptocurrency, the strategy is a bit more secretive, although the strategy has already been analyzed: a new character starts publishing, makes noise, promotes a token, attracts buyers, and when the operation ends, the account disappears. And start again. They called him in that video Pump and dumpAnd there are already experts who warn that all these movements run on very diffuse lines: a professor of company law in Munich recalled that the promoters have to plan for the crypto fall from the beginning to talk about manipulation, and on October 1 the creator of the token has not yet sold his portfolio.
prolific writer. The business around the character doesn’t have to belong to its author. It comes with six different tokens vaccine $JEANPHIL, and the principal was listed on October 19 with a capital of $5.9 million. what they have memecoins Viral character is a resource anyone can exploit. And moreover, everything is shrouded in a strange fog of authorship that is difficult to trace. For example, the Spaniard and Cayetano Borza Mari, an Instagram account with less than 300 followers and four Reel A video that has garnered over 16,000 likes since October 7 It’s not entirely clear if it’s an AI or what the business is… but we’ll probably find out soon
Risk for influencers? The question is whether this character can replace one influencer Flesh and Blood forces us to rethink the chasm between numerical reach and real impact. Already in 2019 we were saying a case Instagrammer With 2.6 million followers who only sold 36 t-shirts. What sustains a creator is the relationship he builds with his audience over years of showing his daily life. Visibility is not the same as fame and Gene Phil doesn’t have time to accumulate fame. Therefore, when users discovered that Phil AI, many were disappointed.
Another competitor. From that point of view, these virtual characters are not rivals dominantBut the meme that is fashionable this week and which must be copied without mercy. And vice versa, AI wins by volume. Of course, they have to be careful: from August 2, Article 50 of the European AI Regulation obliges anyone who creates people with AI to publicly state that it is artificial, although if the content is “obviously” satirical or part of a fictional work, that’s enough to warn that it doesn’t get in the way. A boxer with an operetta villain’s mustache might qualify for that exception. There are always exceptions.
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