Virtual influencers are becoming more popular and prevalent everyday. A full-blown industry has sprung up around them – an industry with agencies and companies dedicated to creating and managing them, with some of the top personas earning into the millions annually.

But our guest today has noticed a troubling pattern – many virtual influencers are crafted as young, women of color. But their creators? Often men with different racial identities, who work at marketing agencies.

Jul Parke is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information specializing in social media platforms, digital racism, virtual influencers, and AI phenomena. She is currently a visiting scholar at NYU.

Jul’s doctoral research explores what motivates companies and creators to produce these virtual, racialized women, which she says is a new form of commercializing gender and racial identity in digital spaces.

As we enter the world of AI proliferation, it seems virtual influencers are here to stay. There are at least 200 of these digital personalities out there today, and platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are rolling out new tools that enable everyday users to craft their own virtual personas.

Given the absence of a governing framework for non-humans, the rise of virtual influencers on social media raises a whole host of urgent ethical questions about authenticity online.

Visit here for a full list of the virtual influencers and resources discussed in this episode.