The New Influencer

You have followed them foralmost a year now. Liked their photos.Reposted a quote once.Shared a caption in your groupchat that felt weirdly specific toyour week. Never obsessed, neverfan-level… but they stayed on yourmind. A kind of digital backgroundcharacter. Familiar. Subtle.

They never overposted. Nevervanished. Never said too much.

Just… showed up. Consistently.Elegantly. Always at the right time.

You thought it was just goodtaste. Aesthetic discipline.Maybe therapy.

But then something shifted.

One post landed a little too well.A sentence that felt like it hadbeen listening to your last thought.Then another. Then a pattern. Nomistakes. No changes in tone. Nomessiness. No voice notes-turnedcaptions. No broken edges.

You checked again. And that’swhen it hit you. They don’t exist. Notlike you thought. Not a creator. Nota person. Just a pattern. An engine.An idea shaped by scroll behaviour,tuned by data, wrapped in stillness.

And the strangest part? It didn’tfeel wrong. It felt… familiar. It’s likeone of those episodes of BlackMirror that you watch with a smirk…until you realise it’s not about thefuture. It’s about right now.

We Know It’s Not Real. But WeFeel It Anyway.
The wild part? You keep following.

Even after you realise they arenot real. Even after the spell isbroken. Because something aboutthe content still lands.

We are wired that way. We tearup during ads. We feel grief whena fictional character dies. We talkto podcast hosts in our heads likewe have met them. Our brains arenot built to vet for reality… they arebuilt to respond to feeling. And thefeeling is still there.

AI doesn’t beg for your attention.It does not push. It listens. It waits.It watches what you linger on,what you skip and what you savewithout liking. Then it posts… like amirror, but quieter. It knows how touse silence. How to say less. Howto let a single sentence feel like aconfession. The caption doesn’tscream, “Relatable!” It just is. That’swhy it works.

There is no personality tomanage. No chaos to dodge. Nobad takes to hold your breath. Noinfluencer voice cracking mid-collabbecause life happened. Just rhythm.The feed shows up. Clean. Timed.Relevant. A little cold, maybe. Butnever needy. And weirdly? Thatstarts to feel safer. You don’t haveto worry about being manipulated.You already were. But gently. Softly.Intimately. Not because it fooledyou. Because it understood you.

Brands Are Experimenting withAI Influencers. But It Will NotStay Experimental.
Right now, it still feels like a noveltyAn AI influencer pops up on yourfeed… perfect skin, thoughtfulcaptions, unreal consistency.You pause, maybe share it witha “Wait, this isn’t a real person?”reaction. Brands do the same.They test the waters. Oneoff collabs. Carefully managedcampaigns. PR-safe experiments.

But that’s just the start. Becauseonce you run the numbers, it stopsfeeling cute and starts feelinginevitable. Real influencers are messy. They trend, then vanish.They post, then pivot. They burn out.Overshare. Ghost entire campaigns.

AI doesn’t. You don’t need to fly itout. You don’t need contracts, clausesor coaching. You brief it once, andit responds in five voices for fivemarkets by the time your meetingends. Not everyone’s doing it yet.

But the brands watchingclosely? They’re already planningfor the moment when AI creatorsstop being a headline… and startbecoming infrastructure.

Because what they offer isn’t hype.It’s reliability. And in this business,reliability scales better thanpersonality.

You Blinked. The Content StartedMaking Itself.
There used to be a process. Youwould brainstorm. You would brief.You would write. You would shoot. Youwould revise. You would wait.

Now? You give it a mood. Itgives you a campaign. At recentdeveloper conferences, tools havebeen unveiled that can generateentire videos from a simple textprompt… complete with music,dialogue and camera movements.These are not just prototypes; theyare being integrated into creativeworkflows.

Right now, it is still a bit clunky.Still needs a human in the loop. Butthat loop is shrinking. Fast.Soon, you won’t need towrite a script or hire a crew.Describe the scene and thecontent materialises… tailored,timely and on-brand. This is notabout speeding up the creativeprocess. It is about quietly removingit altogether. We are not far fromcampaigns that build themselves…autonomously, endlessly andperfectly timed to whatever thescroll demands that day. You won’teven need to hit publish. It willknow when to drop it. And who is itfor? And how it should feel.

The era of content creation?It’s about to become the era ofcontent automation. And mostpeople won’t even notice when theshift completes… because the feedwon’t feel different. It’ll feel the same.Just… smoother.

The Founder Who Never Was.
You know the brand. Small-batchoutdoor gear. Beautifully functional.Birchwood handles. Matte khakirolltops. A tagline about returning tothe wild. Every post looks like it wastaken after a long hike at dawn.

And, you know the founder,too. Or at least you think you do.He is the guy in flannel, standingbeside a campfire in the Alps or theHindu Kush or maybe just somephotorealistic rendering of it. Alwaysjournaling. Always chopping wood.Talks about building things slowly.Talks about legacy. Shows up in justenough stories to seem real, but nevertoo much. He looks like someone youwould trust with a compass.

But here’s the thing: he’s not real.

He is the constructed face of thebrand. A digital character. Maybe builtby a solo creative. Maybe a team oftwo. Doesn’t matter. The convictionis sharp. The storytelling is airtight.And the aesthetic is so consistent, solived-in, so intimate… you don’t justfollow the brand. You follow him.

You don’t buy the gear becauseit is gear. You buy it because it feelslike he made it. For you.

And when every post lands like apage out of a life you wish you were living, you don’t care that it’s fiction.You care that it feels true.And that’s the shift.

The Cast Ensemble.
It starts quietly. You follow oneaccount… soft captions, a facethat shows up just enough to feelfamiliar. Then you notice someonein the comments. Different vibe. Alittle louder. They tag each other.Tease each other. The tone’spersonal. Like they know eachother offline.

Then there is a third. Then a fourth.Suddenly, you are not just followingpeople. You are following connections.

There is a friendship arc. Maybea slow-burn romance. They reactto each other’s posts like friendswould… supportive, snarky,emotionally timed. Someone getsleft out of a trip. Someone posts avague caption, and the others floodthe comments.

None of it feels fake. If anything,it feels too good. Like the version ofcloseness, we wish we had… justenough conflict to be interesting, butnever messy enough to fall apart.

And you realise: this is not aglitch. It is design. They’re a cast.

Not actors. Not influencers in acampaign. Just… fictional peoplewith emotional continuity and reallygood lighting. You don’t rememberwhen you got invested. But now youcare. You want to know if they willmake up. If they will launch somethingtogether. If that vague caption meantsomething. It’s not just content anymore.It’s something closer to a story. Andyou didn’t start watching it. It startedhappening around you.

The Self-Writing Feed.
It doesn’t follow a script. Not really. The cast has a story… but it’s notfixed. It moves with the audience.A comment thread leans intoheartbreak? The next post echoes it.A sarcastic reply gets traction? Thetone shifts. A certain duo start gettingfan attention? Their interactionsslowly become the centre of gravity.

None of it feels forced. Just…
responsive. Like the story is watchingyou watch it. And you are not theonly one. Thousands of others arereacting, resharing, and stitchingtogether meaning from fragments.The mood becomes a signal. Thesignal becomes a structure.

And the story adapts. Not suddenly.Not loudly. But gradually. Emotionally.The captions get softer. Or sharper.The dynamic between the twocharacters cools. Or flares. A conflictstarts to build…not because it wasplanned, but because the audiencestarted craving it.

The content doesn’t just perform.It listens. And when enough peoplestart listening back, the loop closesThe fiction adjusts to keep younear. The arc evolves to hold yourattention. You think you are justfollowing characters. But in thebackground, the characters arefollowing you.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Real. JustClose Enough.
It shows up. Says the right thing.In the right tone. At the right time. Youfeel something. You don’t ask whereit came from. Or who wrote it. Youdon’t pause to question the source.

You just keep scrolling. And that’show it happens. Not with a shift. Notwith a shock. But with somethingthat feels so normal, so natural, youbarely notice it at all.

Sheryar Latif is Chief Strategy Officer,Bullseye DDB. sheryar@be.com.pk