These People Aren’t Real — But Their TikToks Are Going Viral Anyway

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These People Aren’t Real — But Their TikToks Are Going Viral Anyway

A new wave of AI-generated influencers is taking over your For You Page, and most people can’t tell they’re not human.

It used to be that if you saw a girl doing a GRWM (Get Ready With Me), telling you about her iced coffee addiction and spinning around in thrifted jeans, you’d assume she was, well, real. A person. Maybe living in L.A., maybe just weirdly good at ring light angles, but a human being with pores and mood swings and maybe a cat. That’s not a safe assumption anymore. Lately, a strange new breed of influencers has crept into TikTok’s feed: people who don’t exist at all. Not in the flesh, anyway.

They talk like us, they blink like us, they complain about the price of oat milk like us—and yet,