Over the past few months, a wave of “virtual influencers,” “digital dream girls,” and “digital muses” has been appearing on Instagram and other social-media platforms.
These influencers, generated using AI, have amassed thousands, or sometimes hundreds of thousands of followers — like Sika Moon and Aitana. And similar to Sika Moon and Aitana, many of them are young, beautiful women wearing revealing outfits and publishing adult content for their most dedicated fans.
For that, they’ve had one go-to place: Fanvue. The platform functions like OnlyFans and Patreon, offering paywalled content. Unlike its competitors, which largely ban adult content generated with AI, Fanvue is bullish on it and is investing heavily in its community of AI influencers.
But as Fanvue continues to build its user base and business model on AI-generated explicit content, some of its practices have prompted concerns among creators.
One creator described their relationship with the platform as “a blessing and a challenge.” This creator, as well as others, said Fanvue had been slow to address some of their concerns. All the creators referenced in this piece asked to remain anonymous to protect their relationship with the platform. Their identities are known to Business Insider.
One particular Fanvue tactic that has irked creators is its practice of sending emails to some of its users offering free subscriptions to specific AI models.
Some creators, who had been hustling to grow their follower count on the platform with the aim of building an income, took this as a betrayal. They argued that it was unethical to use their subscribers’ emails to promote other influencers without their consent, and said they worried about losing their fans.
“While it may not be explicitly prohibited in the terms and conditions, influencers argue that the practice, if true, raises ethical concerns about the platform’s intentions and commitment to fostering a fair and transparent creator community,” the first creator said.
Fanvue’s CEO Will Monange said this was “just one of many tests the company runs to experiment with the optimization of fan activation and retention.”
“One of the angles we look at is if we can keep a fan retained within the platform circulating around, then they’re much more likely to come back to that creator or to go to other creators,” he told Business Insider. “I can fully appreciate why creators have expressed that. They look at it as they maybe feel like a fan is being redistributed away from them. From our perspective, what we’re trying to do is make sure that fans have value.”
Some of the models Fanvue promotes in these marketing emails have little to no presence on social media, prompting the creator community to wonder who created these influencers and what Fanvue’s reasons were for promoting them specifically.
Monange said the test was run with “creators that are comfortable running free trials.”
Creators say the platform’s ‘ambassadorship’ program still needs some fine-tuning
After gaining traction in the AI space, Fanvue started hiring some AI influencers to be “ambassadors” — primarily to post pictures on social media promoting the platform and its support of creators.
Three creators said they were promised between $200 and $300 in exchange for Instagram and X content. These were non-contract agreements, discussed via text.
A second creator, who is also an ambassador with tens of thousands of Instagram followers, shared a screenshot showing that they were offered $200 in exchange for two feed posts promoting Fanvue, one collaborative post with Fanvue’s account, three stories promoting the platform, and two X threads.
Two creators told BI they were still waiting to be paid two months after their promotional posts were published. They confirmed they got paid after BI sent a request for comment to Fanvue.
Monange told BI that the company was working to formalize all the ambassadors in a manner resembling a classic influencer partnership. He added that the missing payments “slipped through,” and that it wasn’t in the platform’s interest to not pay its influencer partners.
For many creators behind these AI influencers, however, the hiccups and doubts about Fanvue don’t outweigh the attention the company is giving them, and they continue to nurture their relationship with it.
“The way they treat us AI creators is good,” a third creator said. “The fact that they allow AI characters to have their own community and their own tools to make money is actually quite nice, and the tools they have are interesting.”
Read the full article here