Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just about ChatGPT and robots ‘taking over the world’. A clever couple have now resigned from their jobs after creating a completely artificial social media model – and they claim she’s earning their income.
Introducing Olivia C, an uncannily ultra-realistic influencer created entirely using artificial intelligence (AI). Her Instagram ‘@oliviaisflyinghigh‘ displays the life of a passionate traveller, with seemingly effortless ‘snaps’ from countries worldwide including Portugal, Peru and even the UK.
However, behind this seemingly relaxed lifestyle is a team of two working relentlessly to bring ‘Olivia C’ to life. This includes married pair Alvero, 42, and Rita, 34 who’ve now set up creative agency Falamusa, after spending 20 years in the advertising industry.
“Oliva is like an informal fun experience to test thetechnology,” Alvero said in an exclusive interview with TheMirror. “We saw it was a trend, we thought: ‘let’s see if we can do better, let’s see if we can make it really believable, let’s see how people react to it, let’s just gather some insights’.
“Artificial intelligence people are talking about and speculating and making some fantasies that it’s going to replace us, destroy us and the world. So, we thought let’s work with it and try to find out what it does… Things are going really fast, it’s very, very motivating – we are discovering real-world applications of the technology.”
While Alvero focuses more on the marketing aspect of Olivia C, Rita utilises a range of new technologies such as Luma AI and Midjourney to create her appearance. Olivia C’s realistic social media photos earned her third place in the world’s first AI-generated beauty pageant (WAICAs) held earlier this year.
Referred to as the global ‘tech Oscars’, this event saw entirely artificial models judged on their looks, technical aspects and social media influence in an online competition. This comes at a time when ‘brands are increasingly turning to AI-generated models’ for product promotion due to their cost-effectiveness and time efficiency, as reported by SpringerNature.
Imagine Education – a coaching platform for AI creators – has also reportedly seen a ‘360% jump in sign-ups’ in the past month alone. The platform offers courses on the ‘required skills to build your own AI influencer’, which its spokespeople suggest is the perfect solution for those ‘who don’t want to be public facing creators’ but still want to ‘leverage the influencer lifestyle’.
This trend has unsurprisingly sparked some important debates, with observers questioning whether AI-generated models perpetuate unrealistic beauty standards or will eventually replace ‘real-life’ models. Despite the complexity of the issue, Alvero insists there is too much fearmongering surrounding it.
Just as iconic characters like Mickey Mouse or Lara Croft captivate audiences, Alvero insists that Olivia C is about crafting an engaging fictional character. However, he admits there are some similarities to his wife.
Alvero continued: “The first time Rita appeared to some of my friends who didn’t know her they said: ‘She kind of looks like Olivia.’ She has freckles like Olivia, she is very pale like Olivia.
“But we created a personality – adventurous, curious – a bit like us. We travel a lot, we have a daughter and we live one month in Spain and the next we go to Sardinia and stay like two months there. We like to travel a lot, so Olivia has that feeling, she’s very adventurous but at the same time she’s indulgent.
“She likes the good things of life like good wine, sometimes a good dress… sometimes she’s reading an unknown reader from Peru…We wanted a human being girl, she looks like this and that’s it.” He later added: “We didn’t question it, I know there are people that are talking about real beauty issues and the impact but it’s not our goal.”
Alvero doesn’t exactly know what the future looks like for Olivia C, but he and Rita are determined to use her for good. He’s also especially interested to work with production companies and even education programmes to see how AI can be implemented in a creative way.
He went on: “History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes. We’ve always seen that in history I guess from fire. You know ‘oh fire it will burn everything’, no but it’s great for making food.
“Or photography – ‘oh what will happen to painting with photography?’ Well, it opened the view for other artistic movements like futurism and cubism.
“There’s always a shock and then an integration. I believe that’s the same thing. Of course, there’s a huge topic about implications [of AI] in a lot of places socially, politically – a lot of things. But I think that always happens… Of course it will be very impactful, it will change a lot of things, but that’s the way things have been going for centuries.”
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