These Travel Influencers Don’t Want Freebies. They’re A.I. | Social media posts by A.I.-created travel avatars cost far less to produce, yet look and sound real. Human influencers worry they’re being elbowed out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/travel/ai-influencers.html
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“Travel companies, tourism boards and other businesses are turning to A.I.-created influencers to lower costs, control messaging and create content more quickly, and human influencers fear they’re being elbowed out.
Large travel organizations appear to favor beautiful young women for their A.I. avatars — there seem to be few, if any, men.
Comments on A.I. influencers’ accounts range from heart emojis and words of affirmation to attempts to “out” them as A.I. Some people don’t seem to realize, or perhaps care, that the digital influencers are not real.
Viewers may value the feeling that human travelers are sharing their unvarnished adventures and opinions, the A.I. avatars’ lack of authenticity will soon be harder to detect. “The colors, the detail — they are already insanely good,” Mr. Cibari said. “It can already be impossible to tell the difference.”
All this leaves some travelers, like Taliesen Black-Brown, 28, a filmmaker from Seattle, feeling even less trusting of what they see online. Social media, he said, already felt “fake and vapid.” Now, he added, “this stuff is even more inauthentic because it’s not even connected to someone’s real life experience.”
Those poor influencers. Now they have to get a normal job like the rest of us. My poor heart breaks
oh no, useless things getting replaced by other useless things
“Human influencers worry they’re being elbowed out.”
Good! I will rejoice when influencer is a forgotten job title.
Of all the jobs I can get behind AI automation for, influencers (and travel influencers especially) are probably the ones.
The question will be: Will AI influencers generate the human interest and drive tourism.
No adult I know enjoys the Ai-ification of all content.
While it likely would never be public, I’d love to see actual industry ROI data on any “influencing” marketing. I feel like the whole Instagram online life thing is such a up their own butt thing where only other Insta influencers care. Do real people who spend money actually care what any of these posters, human or AI, do and base their financial decisions on them?
Pretty sure the worst is to come, with people/companies using AI to degrade the reputation of their competitors on social media and review platforms. They will just need to harvest a bunch of photos from one place and create fake images. It already happens with NGOs and misinformation.
What a time to be alive…
Oh nos! Not the loss of influencers! What will we do??? /s
“Influencers” are “advertisers”.
Advertisers and ad campaigns constantly change.
My daughter recently made a comment to me about the AI Coke commercial…”Dad, did you know that ad is all AI?”
“Yup.”
“What are your thoughts on that?”
“It’s an ad sweetie…I hate all ads equally. Have you ever seen a documentary on “food” advertising? You know that most of the “food” they film is glue and plastic and all sorts of other inedible garbage, right?”
“Oh yeah, I have seen that. What’s your point?”
“My point is…it’s somehow ok for other humans to lie and deceive us, but when a computer does it we’re all supposed to flip out? Lies are lies, I don’t care the source, I don’t appreciate any lies.”
“Oh, that’s a good point.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
I am frustrated with influencers to begin with. Manipulation is shitty.
I LOATHE the commercialization of hobbies more then anything else.
I’m tired of people turning hobbies into a “career” and then getting mad that ai is stealing those jobs.
No one needs to get paid to travel. Just do it for fun because you enjoy it! If you vlog and people watch it, that’s cool too. But no one cares about a hobby as a career.
People literally pay money to travel for fun on their own time and their own dime. No one should feel entitled to compensation for enjoying their hobby. Just have fun. It doesn’t need to be a job.
Let the tourism boards do the advertising and the commercialization. It’s not like anyone uses that stuff to decide where to go anyways.
Honestly wondering if it would be better with AI corporate influencers than the current situation of human influencers who blur the line between person and corporate by peddling all kinds of political samaritan false signalling, just to sell their brand.
An AI Simulacra cannot have a human experience, therefore a real human cannot identify with them.
This fictional being did fictional things in this real place. No one will trust that, in fact they will see it as hiding the truth.
I… do rather struggle to feel pity for a professional shill when the company they shill for realises they can get the same advertising elsewhere
AND
the AI version will eventually succumb to AI slop, thus undermining the companies that rely on endless heavy marketing more than a good product.
I guess that’s one “job” I don’t mind being taken by AI.