Don't hesitate to ask questions, or stop me at any point!

Question: what is this? (Note I’m using “what” not “who” because I’m interested in the type of entity Miquela is)

Block and Lovegrove: “Influencers are defined as agents with the power to ‘spread information’ and influence through and across microblogging networks and platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook or Twitter” (p. 269)

Miquela is a virtual influencer. What is that?

How does this relate to PR in social media?

Why use a virtual character and not a real person?

“As noted in earlier studies (see e.g. Charest et al., 2016), the desire to maintain full message control appears to be a key factor when considering interactivity across locations, followed by resource considerations.” (Wolf and Archer, 2018, p. 500)

This includes the relationship between organizations and influencers.

There's a scene in this movie where Katherine (the late night host) is interviewing a YouTube influencer. The influencer berates Katherine: you need me. I don't need you.

“As noted in earlier studies (see e.g. Charest et al., 2016), the desire to maintain full message control appears to be a key factor when considering interactivity across locations, followed by resource considerations.” (Wolf and Archer, 2018, p. 500)

How do we make sense of influencers, both real and virtual?

Block and Lovegrove: “Strategic communication disciplines, aim to be fact-based. As our research demonstrates, Miquela and her CGI peers are not facts but are not fake either. Miquela has been represented by media commentators as ‘honest fakery'”

What's our definition of communication?

“Communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.”

So, how might "honest fakery" interact with this definition of communication?

What implications does this have for PR (strategic communication to publics who have agency)?

And we haven't even considered generative AI yet!

What is the difference between a virtual influencer Miquela and contemporary generative AI?

What sorts of benefits could you see for fusing a virtual influencer with generative AI? What sorts of downsides can you see?

Content warning: suicide mention

"Sewell knew that 'Dany,' as he called the chatbot, wasn’t a real person — that its responses were just the outputs of an A.I. language model, that there was no human on the other side of the screen typing back. (And if he ever forgot, there was the message displayed above all their chats, reminding him that 'everything Characters say is made up!')"