AI-Powered TikTok Ads are Affecting Business Opportunities for Human Influencers

The rise of AI-powered ads and deepfakes on TikTok is threatening business and career opportunities for many influencers as the technology becomes more prevalent on social media.

According to a Business Insider report, more marketing firms have started to reach out to AI companies to produce their ads rather than hire content creators and influencers.

Will Sartorius, CEO of social advertising firm SelfMade, told BI that the company's leverage towards AI provides an advantage in producing faster ads compared to a brand collaboration with content creators.

In turn, influencers reliant on brand collaborations and product promotions are having a hard time securing better deals as they now have to compete with a rapidly evolving technology on top of an already steep market.

This is not to account for the risks of being offered lower compensations as companies move to much cheaper alternatives.

Several brands have already been reported as trying to secure influencers' likenesses to use for future marketing projects.

So far, the phenomenon is primarily prevalent on TikTok where most social media influencers have gathered but other online platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat are recording the same trend.

AI Deepfakes of Influencers Start to Seep into Misinformation Culture

While most instances of influencers' likenesses in AI deepfakes were provided by the content creators themselves, such cases

Several influencers' likenesses are reportedly being used in AI deepfakes to advertise scams or promote misinformation online, many of which were done without the human influencer's consent.

One such case was with Ukrainian influencer Olga Loiek who only later found supposed videos of her spreading political propaganda in Chinese and Russian, languages Loiek does not speak, she told the Financial Times.

With no exact laws protecting influencers from such misuse, influencers like Loiek had to mainly rely on their followers to notify them of similar deepfakes circulating online.

Social Platforms Move to Better Label AI-Generated Content

With the advent of AI-generated content on online platforms, social media sites like TikTok are enforcing stricter policies to properly label and identify AI-generated content and deepfakes on their platform.

The labels can be applied voluntarily, although TikTok can also include the label automatically if it is proven that a video used the technology.

So far, the introduction of AI labels has helped the platform prevent more AI-generated content from surfacing to regular users.