Instagram influencer imma may look like a real person – and have hundreds of thousands of followers – but was created by a company. — Aww Inc/dpa
BERLIN: This pink-haired artist and influencer has not slept a wink after an all nighter at the office, she says.
"I sketched up some cute stuff. Don't tell anyone I didn't take a shower yet," she adds, gazing intently at her laptop, clad in a tracksuit, pen in hand, surrounded by magazines.
What imma's photo does not reveal is that she is not the Japanese woman she appears to be. She is not in fact a person at all.
Watch her videos, though, and it is more obvious she was created on a computer.
Aww Inc, the company that developed imma, says she is Japan's first virtual model.
She is not the only one online, though. Several others have cropped up on various social media sites, especially in Asia. Just like real models, they can also be found on fashion magazine covers, advertising products and some are even on concert stages, drawing thousands of viewers.
To optimize the optical illusion surrounding imma, she regularly shares photos on social media that show her interacting with real people.
She was recently spotted alongside Spanish cartoonist Joan Cornella at his exhibition opening in Tokyo, for example, or with the DJ Steve Aoki and the reggaeton star Maluma.
Plus, alongside jet-setting from one fashion metropolis to the next celebrity, imma also shares her feelings with her 400,000 followers.
"Since I was born I've always hated being lonely," she writes below a picture of herself wearing an outsize hoodie, carrying a black umbrella and looking sad. "What do you do when you're lonely?"
In another post, she talks about an argument with her brother.
These emotional statements show imma's makers stretching the boundaries of what we expect of the virtual world, creating a personal bond by deliberately portraying their character as vulnerable.
That seems to be working, if her hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram are any indication.
When asked about the obvious artificiality of imma's emotional world, her creators told dpa that even real influencers are often accused of staging fake lives online.
Ultimately, people live so much in digital spaces that the border with reality is constantly being blurred, the company says.
"Everything we see online and in the media is a narrative and every individual has the choice whether to believe it or not."
But this type of emotional appeal emanating from artificially created beings is highly problematic, says media analyst Oliver Zöllner of the Stuttgart Institute for Digital Ethics.
He would like to see more transparency around the programmes that are being used. Not everyone can immediately recognize that virtual influencers are not real people, Zöllner told dpa.
"Not every person is aware of the business models of data extraction and exploitation behind them either," he adds.
Zöllner sees this as a form of exploitation that reaches deep into the core of human beings.
Virtual influencers are usually controlled by teams of people in the background, according to the website virtualhumans.org, which is run by industry insiders.
imma, for example, is brought to life in a studio, among other things with actors, through motion capture.
For some virtual influencers, however, artificial intelligence is actually involved, such as Kuki Ai, who talks to her fans on her website using a chat robot.
On social media, on the other hand, Kuki still has to be controlled by real humans, says virtualhumans.org.
Not only do the virtual influencers express emotions, they can also take a stance on issues. Lil Miquela, one of the virtual influencers with the widest reach, is not only successful as a musician and as the face of large fashion companies for advertisements, but also as an activist. Her Instagram profile features the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.
In one post, the eternally 19-year-old shows her 2.8 million followers an image of kayal-stained tears running down her face, accompanied by the phrase: "Normalize ugly crying in public."
It is unclear whether her fans see this as authentic or not. Either way, Time magazine voted the influencer with the blunt fringe and gapped teeth one of the 25 most influential people online in 2018 – alongside former US president Donald Trump and pop icon Rihanna.
What is also certain is that imma, Lil Miquela and their peers have an unbeatable advantage over their flesh-and-blood competitors for businesses, namely they are not likely to do something unpredictably human and they are cheaper.
On the flipside, "as a human, you'll also have them figured out quickly if you spend a little time with them. And they probably get boring quickly," says Zöllner.
Looking ahead, Zöllner sees indications that people will be invited further and further into virtual spaces by tech companies, "where we are supposed to interact with each other and also with virtual figures in a variety of ways."
It is up to the people themselves to create something from such technical possibilities that is useful for society, he adds. – dpa
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