First got here the AI magnificence pageant. Then the AI music contests. Now, there is an award for AI Personality of the Year — maybe the inevitable subsequent step for the AI influencer economic system because it transforms from quirky novelty right into a critical and profitable trade.
The contest, a three way partnership between generative AI studio OpenArt and AI-powered creator platform Fanvue, with backing from AI voice firm ElevenLabs, opens on Monday and runs for a month. The organizers stated it is meant to “celebrate the creative talent ‘behind’ AI Influencers” and acknowledge their rising industrial and cultural clout.
Contestants will compete for a complete prize fund of $20,000, which shall be cut up between an total winner and particular person classes of health, life-style, comic, music and dance entertainer, and fictional cartoon, anime, or fantasy character. Victors shall be celebrated at an occasion in May that the organizers are dubbing the “‘Oscars’ for AI personalities.”
To enter, you should develop your AI influencer on OpenArt’s platform and submit it at www.AIpersonality.ai. You’ll be requested for social media handles throughout TikTook, X, YouTube, and Instagram, in addition to the story behind the character, your motivations for creating it, and particulars of any model work.
Among these assessing contestants are 13‑time Emmy‑successful comedy author Gil Rief, the creators of Spanish AI mannequin Aitana Lopez, and Christopher “Topher” Townsend, the MAGA rapper behind AI-generated gospel singer Solomon Ray. According to a replica of the judges’ briefing seen by The Verge, contestants shall be scored on 4 standards: high quality, social clout, model enchantment, and the inspiration behind the avatar. Specific factors embody reliably participating with followers, portraying a constant look throughout social channels, correct particulars like having the “right number of fingers and thumbs,” and having “an authentic narrative” behind the avatar.
The contest is open to established creators and novices alike, although present AI influencers will nonetheless must submit materials produced on OpenArt’s platform, Matt Jones, head of name at Fanvue, informed The Verge.
Despite being designed to have a good time creators of digital influencers, Jones stated that entrants don’t must publicly determine themselves. “If a person who created this amazing piece of work wants nothing to do with the press or to expose themselves or to have their name out there, that’s obviously fine,” he stated. “There would be no need to thrust anybody into the limelight here. We would just celebrate the piece of work.”
That creators can stay nameless feels odd for a contest judging authenticity, significantly in an AI influencer ecosystem constructed on fictional folks, faux personas, and fabricated backstories. That identical anonymity has additionally helped grifts flourish with little accountability, from the AI white nationalist rapper Danny Bones to MAGA fantasy lady Jessica Foster.
There’s acquainted baggage too, together with persistent questions on originality, whether or not AI-generated work, or perhaps a likeness, has been lifted from actual creators, and whether or not these instruments merely reproduce the identical outdated biases in artificial kind. Organizer Fanvue has already confronted criticism for this prior to now: in 2024, a Guardian columnist described its “Miss AI” magnificence pageant as one thing that “take(s) every toxic gendered beauty norm and bundle(s) them up into a completely unrealistic package.”
To Fanvue’s Jones, creators inevitably go away one thing of themselves within the AI characters they make. “You can’t help but put a little bit of yourself into the stories that you tell and the characters that you make,” he stated, urging creators to “lean into that.” The thought feels at house within the influencer economic system: not strictly actual, however a type of artificial authenticity the web already is aware of how one can deal with.