AI Travel influencers taking "jobs" from human travel influencers

[ergophobe]

If there's one sector where I would rejoice at human job displacement, it is influencer culture.

And it appears I am getting my wish. It will unquestionably make the webscape worse, but it will make destinations plagued by influencer stunts better. At least an AI influencer won't jump into a Yellowstone hot pool for a photo op.

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

Here is the featured influencer for tourism in India
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ_1xREPf4V/

She still looks AI (impossibly smooth skin), but hey, she's cheap.

Meanwhile Emma is promoting Germany
https://www.instagram.com/emmatravelsgermany/

Not quite as overdone, but there is still an aspect of Stepford Wives to all of these

However, it is important to keep this in perspective. This will NOT decrease the number of human influencers. We have that on good authority. According to the article: "Despite making a large investment in Sama, Qatar Airways said it was not planning to use fewer human influencers."

So that's settled. I'm sure humans everywhere are encouraged by that.

[Travoli]

I had a similar conversation with a Youtuber friend recently. Spotify is promoting their own AI music (skip the artist/creator royalties). I told him Youtube and the other social media platforms won't be far behind.

Creators with the closest/most trusted relationships with their viewers will last the longest, IMO.

[ergophobe]

> closest/most trusted relationships

Definitely. There is still a lot of room to a human with tons of real-world experience who scours the world and the web and once or twice a week puts together something for you in an area of interest. Replacing that feels far off.

At the other end, there are tons of review sites that have never seen the product let alone used it and review on specs. There are tons of travel influencers who have little knowledge of the place they are promoting (and sometimes haven't even been there). They are toast.

[Rupert]

I think they look amazing. I am easily fooled it seems.

[ergophobe]

Pay attention to things like the skin, the hair, the eyes.

Generally, they look like what someone's fantasy of beauty looks like. Though the German model does have some skin blemishes. But in general, it seems to be a resolution issue - there's too much smoothing, almost the opposite of JPEG artefacts.

I think once the context window increases 5X, which I'm sure is coming soon, the Uncanny Valley feel will be gone.

[ergophobe]

These on the other hand, which use a real photo and a real actor and blend the two have no uncanny valley for me

https://x.com/AngryTomtweets/status/2001569619375698199

And this has a couple of tiny glitches in the Matrix (Keanu's arm is too long), but they will be gone in another six three months.

https://x.com/DrClownPhD/status/2001548232787120390

[rcjordan]

There are a bunch of picture-by-category bots (category = travel, architecture, famous artworks, flowers, birds, etc) on bsky. I nuke most but there are a couple I let live.