How Does a "Person" Who Doesn't Exist Capture a $170 Billion Market?

A while back, I was scrolling through my phone when a girl showed up on my feed.

She lives in Los Angeles, she's 21, and she likes taking photos, listening to music, and hanging out with friends. She has 2.7 million followers on Instagram and has collaborated with Prada, Dior, and Calvin Klein.

Sounds like a pretty ordinary influencer story, right?

But there was one detail that had me staring at the screen for a long time.

She's not human.

Her name is Lil Miquela, and she's computer-generated. A digital human.

My first reaction was: people actually watch this stuff? People actually believe it? People actually buy things because of her?

So I looked up the numbers, and they floored me.

First, a Number That'll Make You Sit Up

In 2024, the global "virtual influencer" market was worth $6.1 billion.

By 2034, it's projected to balloon to $170.2 billion.

The compound annual growth rate (CAGR): 39.5%.

What does that mean?

Think about it: a "person" stitched together from code and pixels is on track to multiply the market nearly 28-fold in a decade. That's faster growth than almost any industry you can name.

And this isn't some distant-future story. The money is already being made.

What Exactly Is a "Virtual Influencer"?

In plain terms, it's a digital human built with AI and computer graphics. She has a face, a personality, a backstory. She can post, interact with fans, and drive sales for brands.

The difference between her and a real influencer is this — she doesn't get tired, she doesn't age, she doesn't fire off a reckless tweet at 3 a.m., and she never forces a brand to pull its ads overnight because of a scandal.

She's online 24/7, emotionally stable forever, and always follows the script.

Think about what that means for a brand's marketing director.

It means control.

You Can't Manage a Real Person. You Can Manage a Digital One.

Let me give you an example.

In the past, hiring a real celebrity to endorse your brand — the money was one thing, but the bigger risk was this: you never knew what they'd do tomorrow. An affair, tax evasion, an inappropriate comment, and the brand gets dragged into the trending topics overnight while PR scrambles to put out the fire.

Has that been rare these past couple of years?

But digital humans don't have that problem. She doesn't make mistakes, because you've written every part of her.

She won't demand a pay raise, won't walk off set at the last minute, won't feud with her agency, won't insist on first-class flights and five-star hotels.

She can even work with 100 brands at once, playing a hundred different roles, all year round, without a break.

That's the most ruthless thing about virtual influencers: it removes "the human" — the single biggest source of uncertainty — from marketing.

58% Are Following, 35% Are Buying

You might think this is all just brands patting themselves on the back while consumers couldn't care less.

That's what I thought at first, too.

But the data proved me wrong.

58% of people follow at least one virtual influencer.

Among Gen Z, that figure jumps to 75%.

Even more striking: 35% of consumers have actually spent money on something because a virtual influencer recommended it.

Not just scrolling past — actual purchases with real money.

I sat with that number for a moment when I saw it. Because it means a lot of people don't care whether there's a real person on the other side of the screen. What they care about is whether the content looks good, whether the story is well told, whether what's being recommended is tempting.

Interacting with a "person" has become interacting with a "persona."

Why Did the Fashion Industry Move First?

In the 2024 data, fashion and lifestyle accounted for more than 30% of the virtual influencer market. Way out in front.

Why?

Think about what the fashion industry sells. It sells beauty, imagination, the feeling that "put this on and you become someone else."

Virtual influencers were born to do exactly that. She'll never gain weight, never break out, never fail to fit into a sample. She can do a street-style shoot in Paris in the morning, "fly" to Tokyo in the afternoon, and show up in the front row at New York Fashion Week by evening.

No scheduling conflicts. No travel costs. No off days.

Lil Miquela is the textbook example. Created by a company called Brud, this digital girl has collaborated with one top luxury brand after another, and her engagement rate is higher than many real influencers.

Then there's Shudu Gram, billed as "the world's first digital supermodel," who has worked with Balmain and Vogue. Her skin is dark, her frame is tall and slender, her features so flawless they barely look human — because they're not.

These brands aren't chasing gimmicks. They're spending real money and treating virtual influencers as a marketing staple.

But Don't Get Carried Away Just Yet

Everything has a flip side.

Where are virtual influencers' soft spots?

Trust.

You say she's great, she says she's great, but she's never once used that product. She doesn't know what that face cream feels like on her skin, she doesn't know whether those shoes rub after a long walk, she doesn't know how heavy that bag gets when it's full.

People aged 35 to 44 rate their trust in virtual influencers at 6.5 out of 10. Not low, exactly, but hardly reassuring.

A real influencer can tell you the genuine feeling of using that serum at 3 a.m. after working late. A virtual influencer can't.

She will never have "used" anything.

Which raises a question: when the recommender isn't a user herself, how much weight does the recommendation still carry?

There's no answer to that yet. But it will determine how far this market can go.

And One More Thing You Might Have Missed

Amid all the noise, there's a set of data especially worth chewing on.

24% of people don't even know there are virtual influencers among the ones they follow.

In other words, roughly a quarter of the audience is being kept in the dark. They think they're interacting with a real person, when the other side of the screen is a string of code.

Sit with that for a moment. It's an uneasy feeling.

On one hand, it shows that virtual influencers have crossed the "uncanny valley" — they're so human-like that people can't tell the difference.

On the other hand, it also means that once awareness spreads, some of those 24% will feel deceived and walk away.

Acceptance and backlash are often separated by the thinnest of lines.

My Three Takeaways

Having talked this far, let me share my own thoughts. They might not be right, but they're worth thinking about.

First, this isn't a passing fad.

A 39.5% CAGR doesn't lie. North America accounts for over 40% of the market, which means money and attention are pouring in. As AI makes digital humans more lifelike, and as brands grow more terrified of real people melting down, this trend will only accelerate.

Second, the virtual will multiply — but the "real" will get more expensive.

Once virtual influencers flood the supply side of marketing content, real experience, real emotion, and real lived moments will become scarce. The most valuable thing in the future might not be the digital human who never makes a mistake — it might be the person who has actually used, actually loved, actually cried.

Third, regulation is coming, sooner or later.

A market where 24% of the audience doesn't know they're interacting with a digital human will inevitably get rules. Whether to label things "virtual," whether disclosure is mandatory, how to define false advertising — these debates have already begun in Europe, and in 2024 ISBA (Incorporated Society of British Advertisers) released the fourth edition of its Influencer Marketing Code of Conduct. Rules landing is only a matter of time.

Finally

The day I scrolled past Lil Miquela, I ended up flipping through about half an hour of her posts.

Honestly, it's beautifully done. The outfits have taste, the captions have warmth, and the comment-section banter is genuinely fun. If you didn't know she was a digital human, you'd probably fall for her.

Then I put my phone down and thought about it.

A "person" who doesn't exist is prying open a real, hundred-billion-dollar market. Brands pay for her, consumers spend on her, platforms give her traffic.

She doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, doesn't make mistakes, doesn't age.

But she's also never truly lived.

Is that good or bad? I can't say for sure. But it's happening — and faster than you think.

Maybe the next person you follow on social media, the one who catches your eye, doesn't exist at all.

And you might never even notice.