AI Influencers take over in 2026


I mentioned this shortly in my previous entry, but AI-generated UGC’s are taking the world by storm. 


Google Trends show the search volume for the term “AI UGC” in %. Date cut off was 15th of February

What is a UGC video? (User Generated Content)

The abbreviation simply means “User Generated Content”, but that phrasing is very broad. In a typical business / marketing context, a UGC is a form of an advertising creative, which is designed to present a “social proof” element in order to convince users to purchase a certain product. 


It is a format that has developed over time, not a sincere review, but rather a carefully planned creative involving elements such as the initial 2 second Hook, visual and audio based CTAs and a fast action cut. Influencers participating in a UGC often have never tried the product and are not incentivized by their real experience as a user, but rather monetarily, typically charging between 100 and 1500 dollar for making a creative. 



There are 2 driving forces to this boom:


  1. Pricing

In the world of business, profit rules the world and for simple logics, if it is possible to cut marketing costs in marketing while maintaining a high quality standard, business will be attracted to that. 


PPC.io did a deep study and compared priced of UGC creators on the popular marketplaces and found that the average cost of a UGC production was $ 212 dollar (or approximately 180 euro). Designrevision found 198 dollar (167 euro), which is quite similar. There are many nuances to the pricing regarding compensation structures, performance bonusses, format specifications etc, but this is a good ballpark figure.


Because we can see that even entry level creative prices are significantly more expensive than those of AI UGCs. 


Let’s take a look at AI UGC prices. While most AI UGC tools charge a monthly fee, the costs per AI video come down to less than 10 euro per video production. (Arcads.AI at 11 dollar per 10 videos, MakeUGC at $6.90 per video). This means that for the costs of 1 “Human” UGC video, you could make around 20 AI videos, a 20x cost cut.


In marketing, leveraging UGC videos for sales is very difficult. Results are highly fluctuating as performance depends on the ability of the video and its creator to go viral. Thus, being able to create many videos and split test different messages, offers and even actors, is an enormous advantage. 


Besides the huge price difference, AI videos avoid the challenges and time investment of having to find suitable influencers, negotiate deals, send the sample product and wait 5-14 days before the video is ready. 


  1. AI Advancements


Besides pricing, we get to the second reason why AI built UGC are exploding, which is due to the technology evolving. While AI generated UGCs started to pick up around summer 2025, the options where mostly limited to a standard template where you  had to pick a pre-set actor and emotional expressions where limited. 




Digital twins

The technology now enables you to create a convincing “Digital Twin”. By uploading pictures from different angles of your own face, the AI model gets a solid understanding of how to represent you in various contexts. It allows for example a company founder to replace the face of any actor with their own. Voice cloning gives the avatar a realistic voice.

Consistent characters

AI has become much better in keeping a character consistent. This is great for companies that want to launch a series of videos that feature the same protagonist, or for example make an organic profile channel that attracts followers consistently. There are already many examples of AI generated influencers, such as Lil Miquela, Lu do Magalu and Aitana López, who have acquired millions of followers on social media and are making thousands of dollars. 

Crossing the “Uncanny Valley”

In general, the technology has become very good in maintaining a natural flow, voices have become realistic, emotions are better understood just based off a prompt and videos are edited in similar ways that a human would choose to edit their videos. 


There had been this strange phase in which companies were put off by little imperfections in an AI generated UGC, which have now been largely eliminated. Listening to a well crafted AI UGC now feels like listening to a human. 


Ethical considerations

In the ethical sense, we could say that UGC creatives had always been unethical. The actors present the product as if they endorse it, while the real incentive is that they are paid actors. However, AI generated UGCs take this a step further. Now is it not only the opinion of the influencer that is fake, it is also the influencer themselves. There is no person holding the product and it is even not sure if the product is itself real at all.


AI Generated UGCs increase the price pressure on human influencers. Designrevision reported that the income of influencers had dropped by 44% in 2025. This makes it much more difficult for human influencers to make a living, which can cause a snowball effect where even more influencers turn to AI in order to ensure their income. 


Regulation

Besides existing regulation on misrepresentation and false advertising, more help is on the way. The European Union is a frontrunner in AI regulation and specific regulations under the “AI Act” are set to start becoming enforced from the 2nd of August 2026. This includes the requirement for deepfakes to be clearly identifiable as such. It also includes the requirement for AI UGCs to have a “digital watermark”, which is a piece of metadata in the html code which makes it possible for platforms like Tiktok or Instagram to automatically mark AI-generated content. Perpetrators may be fined € 15 million or 3% of the annual revenue.


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