An Amish avatar and an AI monk are launching social media supplements | World news

Behind Melanskia is a genuine human being, Josemaría Silvestrini, who is part of a growing vanguard of entrepreneurs taking advantage of rapid advances in AI to promote their brands using people who don’t actually exist.

It is, in many ways, a marketer’s dream. Now, virtually anyone can produce highly realistic videos with ersatz personalities carefully calibrated to appeal to any target audience, and do so for a fraction of the cost of a real person.

“AI is a game-changer,” said Silvestrini, 28, who runs the company from Shanghai while completing a master’s program. “Every part of the business is adapting to AI.”

But the technological leap is also raising the alarm that consumers could be deceived by deepfakes. A February study published in the British Journal of Psychology found that people overestimated their ability to recognize AI-generated faces, leaving them vulnerable to “fraud and deception.” That risk intensifies as technology improves.

While AI once had obvious gifts such as hands with extra fingers, newer videos appear disconcertingly authentic and viewers are often not told otherwise. In videos, Melanskia visits what appears to be a fully stocked Costco store, milking cows and baking bread. Their wrinkles look realistic; Shadows fall where they should.

“I thought the Amish weren’t allowed to use electricity,” commented one confused Instagram user.

Timothy Caulfield, research director at the University of Alberta Health Law Institute, said the use of AI has grown in the wellness space, a crowded but lucrative market where consumers rely on perceptions of authenticity and identity to make purchasing decisions. An Instagram account with 125,000 followers, run by a self-described “scammer” from Miami, features a Buddhist monk with an AI-generated English accent who claims to live in Tibet promoting fiber supplements and soursop bitters. That content is also not labeled as AI-generated.

With AI, Caulfield said, brands can inexpensively experiment with a wide variety of avatars until one works.

“It’s tremendously efficient,” he said. “You can select an image that perfectly fits the vibe you’re trying to produce.”

Several states have passed laws requiring disclosure of AI content, including one in California that requires AI companies to watermark it and another that requires social media companies to detect and label it. In December, Governor Kathy Hochul of New York signed the nation’s first legislation explicitly requiring disclosure of “synthetic artists” in advertisements.

Unlike other laws, that law imposes a burden on creators of deepfake content, not just social media and artificial intelligence companies. But it doesn’t take effect until June, and it’s still unclear whether an executive order from President Donald Trump in December proposing a regulatory framework for the technology would preempt it and other state-level regulations.

Silvestrini said he was “aware” of the New York regulation and was working with his legal team to ensure his brand would comply with the law when it takes effect.

At a time when people are increasingly uneasy about the ubiquity of technology, Silvestrini has been unusually open about his use of synthetic avatars.

Another brand, Rosabella, has used a wide range of AI avatars on TikTok to promote its moringa supplement. Some of the videos were labeled by the platform as generated by AI. But other videos likely generated by AI, such as one showing an older woman promoting the “age-reversing secrets of moringa,” are not labeled, nor are posts in Spanish showing naturopaths and nutritionists who have different faces but share the same voice praising the benefits of moringa for intestinal health.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued recall notices for Rosabella’s moringa powder capsules after an outbreak of drug-resistant salmonella that led to multiple hospitalizations was linked to the product. Ambrosia Brands, Rosabella’s parent company, did not respond to requests for comment.

“Early adopters of AI have realized that you can really make a lot of money in different ways,” said Cameron Wilson, who runs The Digitals, one of the few modeling agencies that represents only virtual talent. “The problem is that most of them seem to be deceptive methods.”

For Silvestrini, the appeal of AI avatars was the opportunity to inject new ideas into his brand’s marketing. Instead of making the videos himself, he relies on more than three dozen independent creators to convince people to buy his product using what appear to be personal accounts.

In exchange for an advance, commissions on sales, and the chance to earn incentive bonuses for views and sales goals, creators are relatively free to come up with their own ideas for selling the dust.

In addition to Melanskia, other synthetic avatars selling the supplement include some muscular middle-aged men of almost identical appearance who post similar videos on Instagram and Facebook, and accounts on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram that feature a healthy farmer with a thick white beard who calls himself Farmer Honest.

Still, Silvestrini said the account promoting his supplement with the highest conversion rate, or number of sales per view, features a real human being: a bearded former bodybuilder from Canada.

Silvestrini, a chemistry student at Williams College, said he developed a recipe focused on sulforaphane, an antioxidant found in broccoli and kale, and hired a lab in California to help manufacture it at scale.

Silvestrini used AI to design the supplement’s logo, packaging, and website, saving him tens of thousands of dollars and months of development time compared to his first entrepreneurial effort, a wellness drink.

As soon as he can afford it, he said, he plans to conduct a clinical study of his product to see if it has any effect on microplastics in the body, as he claims. “I want to put my money where my mouth is,” he said.

In reviews on Amazon, some Modern Antidote customers said the supplement helped them feel better, with one claiming it resulted in a “clearer mind.” But others expressed concern about the way it was marketed; one called it an “AI Scam” and another worried that the Farmer Honest account was fear-mongering to generate sales.

“We take this seriously and are always thinking about how to evolve as regulations develop around this,” Silvestrini said of consumers reacting negatively to AI avatars.

So far, Silvestrini has sold about 1,000 jars of its powder, he said, and he believes consumers will eventually stop worrying about AI.

“I think people’s discomfort about it will fade more and more,” he said. “Very soon it will become so common that there will be more content.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.