🧬 Meet India's First Virtual Influencer
Plus watch what happens when humans and virtuals meet + an interview from virtual influencer Serah Reikka
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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🎤 The Future of Avatars
Christopher Travers Brought the Virtual Influencer Vision to Bucharest Tech Week
Christopher Travers spoke at Bucharest Tech Week this week, sharing his vision for our inevitably avatar-centric social media future: Everyone will embody and interact through avatars, either as individuals or as organizations, with many becoming largely influential on avatar social networks (as virtual influencers). Some will find solace in pseudonymity, while many will opt to still just “be themselves” as avatars.
Enjoy a short recap of the event by The Recursive.
🧬 Core Strands from This Week
Kyra, India’s First Virtual Influencer, Has Over 100,000 Followers
🔎 The Synopsis: India has over 467 million social media users and very few virtual influencers. Since being launched in January, Kyra has already amassed over 100,000 followers on Instagram alone.
🧬 The Splice: With a 90% Indian audience and a strong 10% engagement rate, Kyra is primed to help any brands reach the Indian market in a new and innovative way.
Humans Are Meeting Virtual Influencers and Don’t Know What to Think
🔎 The Synopsis: Jared Leto made a surprise appearance on his press tour for ‘Morbius’ to interview with VTuber Fubuki and her 3 million subscribers on livestream.
🧬 The Splice: While Leto’s interview with Fubuki may be entertaining, the fact that Disney put a VTuber on his list for the Morbius press tour speaks volumes to the influence virtual beings hold over internet culture.
🌟 Virtual Brand Campaign Spotlight
Actor Yoo Ah-in recreated into virtual human for online apparel retail company
🧬 The Splice: Musinsa, a prominent online retail brand in Korea, has transformed famous actor Yoo Ah-in into a virtual human for their digital showroom. Musinsa offers digital showrooms for other retail brands that allow users to upload photos of themselves wearing clothes. Yoo Ah-in first became a Musinsa ambassador in 2020 and is now reprising his role with a virtual twist.
🔭 What We’re Looking at This Week
Clinique’s glam squad bridges diversity gap in avatar PFP makeovers
🔑 Key Quote: “The Non-Fungible People (or NFP) collection is made up of 8,888 female and nonbinary avatars, 60 per cent of whom are people of color. It was created by 3D software provider Daz 3D, and launched in January of this year in an effort to flood more diverse representation into the hot PFP market.” — Vogue Business
Serah Reikka: What's it like to be a virtual influencer?
🔑 Key Quote: "Serah Reikka is an award-winning actor with more than 79,000 Instagram followers. Since 2014, she has been part of a growing community of social media personalities who don't exist in the flesh. Their content isn't so different from that of human influencers – holiday snaps, a new outfit or two, a lot of selfies. The main difference is that all of it is computer-generated.” — New Scientist on YouTube
Givenchy’s Beauty House Taps Into Roblox’s Metaversal Goldmine
🔑 Key Quote: “Visitors can expect to immerse themselves within a magic kingdom filled with cityscapes, dance floors, and even a castle inspired by the home of the brand’s late founder, Hubert de Givenchy. The company stated that users will be able to virtually apply cosmetics via a designated makeup station, as well as participate in contests where they can win digital fashion accessories.” — Jing Daily
Best,
VirtualHumans.org
Insights by Makena Rasmussen, Christopher Travers, and Astrid Hiort.