She Has 400,000 Instagram Followers and Major Brand Deals. She's Also AI.
Aitana Lopez is a 27-year-old Scorpio with pink hair, Pilates posts, and nearly 400,000 followers. She also doesn't exist — and her team is cashing in on a $32B influencer economy now reshaping itself around synthetic creators.
By Board of Creators Editorial ·
Key takeaways
- Aitana Lopez is a fully AI-generated influencer with nearly 400,000 followers built by Barcelona agency The Clueless.
- Influencer marketing is now a $32.55B industry; 79% of senior marketers say they are increasing AI creator spend in 2025.
- 1 in 3 Gen Z consumers have bought something based on an AI influencer's recommendation, per Whop research.
- Persona and backstory — not render quality — are what unlock real brand deals for synthetic creators.
At first glance, Aitana Lopez looks like any other Barcelona-based fitness influencer. Her Instagram feed is a familiar mix of Pilates workouts, model shoots, and grinning selfies in front of Coachella''s Ferris wheel and inside the Alo gym.
She''s a 27-year-old Scorpio. Her long hair is dyed a soft shade of pink, with dark roots coming through on purpose. Her crush, according to her team, is Jacob Elordi.
She also doesn''t exist.
A "virtual soul" with a real paycheck
Aitana is what her creators at the Barcelona tech agency The Clueless call a "virtual soul." She was built with generative AI, and behind her social platforms — which add up to nearly 400,000 followers — sits a team of eleven people running everything from her image generation pipeline to her brand inbox.
View @fit_aitana on Instagram
The Clueless built her like a character bible, not a model. "The most important thing for Aitana is that she has a backstory," CEO and cofounder Diana Núñez told Fast Company. "We give her a family, a pet — she has a cat — she has a zodiac sign, a favorite movie. Her crush is Jacob Elordi."
That treatment — backstory first, image second — is what separates an AI character with brand deals from generic "AI slop."
The $32 billion market she''s walking into
The timing is not an accident. Influencer marketing is now a $32.55 billion industry. U.S. influencer spend is forecast to hit $12.17 billion in 2026, and six in ten marketers already use AI somewhere in their influencer campaigns, according to a 2025 Sociallyin report.
A survey from Billion Dollar Boy found that roughly 79% of senior marketers are increasing investment in AI-generated creator content this year — even as audience resistance grows louder. Brands want the lower cost, the unlimited shoots, and the lack of scandal risk. Creators (or the small studios pretending to be them) are happy to supply it.
From "AI slop" to MAGA bikini grifts
Not every synthetic creator is as polished as Aitana. Wired reported that one viral MAGA-aligned "influencer," Emily Hart, raked in several thousand dollars a month through subscriptions and merch featuring bikini photos and pro-Trump content — before being exposed as an entirely artificial persona built by a 22-year-old Indian medical student.
The same toolset that lets a Barcelona agency build a high-end fashion avatar also lets a single operator spin up a fake political pin-up from a laptop. The economic model is identical; only the production values change.
Gen Z is buying it — literally
You''d expect rising anti-AI sentiment to flatten this market. The data says the opposite. According to research cited by Fast Company via Whop:
- 1 in 3 Gen Z consumers have made a purchase based on a recommendation from an AI-generated influencer.
- Nearly half of college-aged Gen Z consumers follow at least one AI influencer.
For a generation that grew up with filters, FaceTune, and VTubers, the line between "real person, heavily edited" and "not a person at all" is thinner than the older industry assumed.
What this means for human creators
The takeaway for working creators isn''t "AI is coming for your sponsorship." It''s narrower and more useful:
- Persona is the product. Aitana works because she has a zodiac sign, a cat, and a crush — not because the renders are flawless. Story beats brand-safe stock photography every time.
- Brands will A/B test you against a synthetic. If a $0-talent-fee AI avatar can hit the brief, your pitch needs to lean on the things she can''t fake: lived experience, community trust, and on-camera relationships.
- Disclosure is the next fight. Most platforms still don''t require synthetic creators to label themselves. Expect that to change — and expect human creators to start using "verified human" as a marketing edge.
Sources & credits
Reporting and quotes adapted from Fast Company — Eve Upton-Clark, "She has 400,000 Instagram followers and major brand deals. She''s also AI." Additional context from Wired, Sociallyin, and Billion Dollar Boy. Avatar account: @fit_aitana on Instagram, created by The Clueless.
Source: Fast Company — Eve Upton-Clark