"So You Want to Build an A.I. Star?" Article Reflection No. 193 (10/23/2026)

Article: “So You Want to Build an A.I. Star?”

In The New York Times article “So You Want to Build an A.I. Star?”  journalist Reggie Ugwu discusses Inception Point AI’s efforts to create influencers who are fictional and made by AI. The company states that these AI influencers can contribute to a wider possible variety of content for the public; furthermore, in the article, Seton Hall University assistant professor Jess Rauchberg discussed how these influencers can be an avenue to encourage public (e.g.) interactions with the content. There is a lack of detailed examination (by people) of the podcast content posted by the company, according to the article. Companies have also been using AI-generated models, which has consequently clashed with ideas surrounding beauty standards and their level of authenticity. The article ends with a quote that seems to suggest that the AI-generated figure(s) have an influence on the people who create them, so much as to echo the similarity between them. 

I understand that influencers can have varying ways to support and benefit individuals in (e.g.) learning about various skills (e.g. cooking and gardening, as the article provides examples of) and providing inspiration. But in my opinion, when it comes to learning these skills and finding avenues of inspiration, I believe that AI characters further undermine the value of those very actions. I understand that there are ways to insert the more “human” and thus more “realistic” components into a story such as creating stories about the difficulties that the character has gone through, as described in the article, but I think that the inherent value of these stories’ deliveries is reduced by the fact that the character is AI-generated. By this, I’m not trying to undermine AI characters by saying that these stories are “fake.” I am sure that there are people who have gone through hardships similar to the ones described in these AI characters’ “biographies,” and I really do respect these individuals and the difficulties they have gone through in real life. Here, I want to emphasize that I have faith in this distinction between the amount of value in a story and the amount of value in the delivery of a story—specifically, how it truly reaches people. Especially (as discussed in a Forbes article) with the increasing difficulty in identifying (e.g.) videos generated by AI, more people are, most likely, susceptible to being deceived into thinking that an example of this content is reality when it is the opposite. I’m worried about this. How can we ensure that this inherent value of the delivery of a real-life story is preserved and encouraged among the public as well?