🧬 Korea's Most Popular Virtual Influencers
Plus learn how virtuals use Twitter + Unpacking TikTok's avatar announcement
Good afternoon!
Welcome back to The Splice 🧬 by VirtualHumans.org: a weekly newsletter curating the latest news, developments, and insights in the virtual influencer space.
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⭐ Notable News
Tiktok has announced avatars are coming to the app. Wondering why every social app is adding an avatar feature? We explored why our brains are wired to like avatars of ourselves in our article on How Avatars Transformed the Internet.
🧬 Core Strands from This Week
The Top 10 Virtual Influencers in Korea
🔎 The Synopsis: From animated rabbits to hyperrealistic virtuals that give Miquela a run for her money, we found and compiled the most popular virtual influencers from South Korea.
🧬 The Splice: It should be no surprise that digital beings are becoming increasingly popular in a country where even mainstream K-Pop groups like “aespa” embrace virtual avatars. We’ve similarly explored how cultures in Brazil and China set up virtuals for success in those regions.
How Virtual Influencers Use Twitter
🔎 The Synopsis: While virtual influencers naturally succeed on image-based social platforms like Instagram, Twitter should not be overlooked. Many virtual influencers use their Twitter accounts to connect with fans or the wider web3 community.
🧬 The Splice: The text-based app allows virtual influencers to directly communicate with fans in real-time with Twitter Spaces and tweets, without requiring a whole visual production.
🌟 Virtual Brand Campaign Spotlight
Imma’s Best Friend “Ria” Models For Clarins
🧬 The Splice: Virtual Influencer Ria starred in a new campaign for the new summer makeup line by renowned beauty brand Clarins. Ria is a virtual human created by Aww.inc, the same studio which created Imma and her brother Zinn (whom Ria is currently dating.)
🔭 What We’re Looking at This Week
Google Bans Deepfakes from Its Machine Learning Platform
🔑 Key Quote: “Google won’t allow people to create deepfakes using its collaborative machine learning platform any longer, according to the company…Last month, apparently shortly before this change was made, Motherboard published an investigation into DeepFaceLab, an open-source project that was used in the creation of viral Tom Cruise deepfake.” — Vice
KOLs are dead. Long live the virtual influencer
🔑 Key Quote: "Younger cohorts are demanding greater immersion and interaction with influencers. The metaverse is ideal for such a trend. A future-proof influencer strategy in this can facilitate greater creative and storytelling opportunities — and so lead to richer consumer-brand relationships.” — CampaignAsia
Forever 21, Barbie launch summer collection available in the metaverse
🔑 Key Quote: “With Forever 21 and Barbie’s latest collaboration, shoppers can experience the collection in real life or through the metaverse. The companies used Roblox’s Layered Clothing technology that allows for ‘hyper-realistic 3D clothing’ that fits any avatar.” — RetailDive
Best,
VirtualHumans.org
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Insights by Makena Rasmussen, Christopher Travers, and Astrid Hiort.