• Influencers are getting roasted for using or promoting artificial intelligence.
• AI is deeply polarizing, and using it carries reputational risks for content creators.
• Even creators who are trying to steer clear of AI sometimes get swept up in the controversy.

Being a content creator in the age of AI means navigating a minefield of reputational risks.

Using or simply talking about AI in the wrong way can spark internet backlash, never mind doing a promotional post for an AI company.

Artificial intelligence is highly polarizing, and the backlash against the tech has been ramping up recently. Many factors have contributed to the negative vibes, from unpopular data centers to fears about job displacement and AI-induced price hikes on tech products like video game consoles.

In the particular case of video platforms, AI slop has flooded social feeds with low-quality videos and misinformation, irking some viewers.

In this environment, creators like Hank Green and Cliff Tan have recently faced criticism from their audiences for their associations with AI. There are three main ways creators have been getting raked over the coals about AI in recent weeks.

Here they are:

1. Promoting an AI company

The easiest way for a creator to draw criticism around AI is to post promotional content on behalf of an LLM company or AI firm.

Influencers who posted about attending a luxury OpenAI-hosted "Summer Camp" in early August received a wave of criticism from fans in their comments sections, who variously called it "dystopian," "gross," and "morally bankrupt."

An OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider that the retreat was an education-focused event, and that "creators are an important part of our community and how people get information and learn about our products."

This week, interior design creator Cliff Tan apologized to fans after posting promotional content for the Chinese AI platform, Dreamina, acknowledging the post had disappointed many of his viewers.

Large AI companies have a lot of money to spend on influencer marketing, but creators who want to get that bag should be prepared for potential backlash.

"There's a PR issue with AI as it relates to taking people's jobs and environmental concerns around data centers," Eric Bogard, CEO of the talent firm UnderCurrent Management, previously told Business Insider. "Creators are hesitant to promote AI companies as a result."

2. Using AI in the wrong way

At this stage, pretty much every influencer is using AI tools in some manner.

If you use Adobe Photoshop or TikTok's CapCut, or tweak an image or video with an editing tool, there's a good chance that AI has played a part in your final output.

Audiences generally understand that.

Creators run into trouble when it becomes evident that AI was heavily involved in the making of a finished product.

YouTuber Hank Green learned that lesson when he disclosed he'd used AI as a research tool for one of his shows, and drew an immediate negative reaction from his fans.

"I have been relying too heavily on AI as a research aid," Green said. "It can be very useful for this task, giving me access to a lot of papers I didn't know existed really fast, but I think that has been to the detriment of my work because it has not given me the freedom to find all of my own ways into and around a topic."

The science and educational content creator has since laid out a new policy regarding the use of AI, saying he won't allow any portion of a script to be written, edited, or outlined by an LLM; that a video's thesis must originate with a human; and that no image or music in a video will be AI-generated.

3. Getting flagged for using AI, even if they tried to avoid it

Even if a creator goes out of their way to avoid using AI, they may still get nailed for it.

As social apps like TikTok and Instagram try to detect and label more artificial content in their feeds, some influencers are finding their content getting mislabeled as AI-generated.

Creators like Gregory Littley and Lindsey Lee Lugrin found that social posts promoting work they did offline, such as taking physical Polaroid photos or painting by hand, were flagged as AI.

"I cringe when I see that label," Littley said. "I cringe even more when I know it's not true."

Read more about how influencers are dealing with AI mislabeling

Ashton McGrady was horrified to discover that TikTok had slapped an "AI-generated" label on a post she'd made for Disability Pride Month.

The creator had spent hours making a collage of images, stickers, and advice.

"It was really jarring to me, because that's not something that I personally align with, and neither does my audience," McGrady told Business Insider. "The whole point of being a creator is to create myself." The post later had its AI note removed without explanation.

McGrady's upload was one of the billions that TikTok says it has flagged using a mix of human labeling and automated tools. McGrady said she had a similar experience with a different post on Meta-owned Instagram, too.

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram say AI labeling offers more transparency to viewers, but the inexact processes have led to misclassifications, seven creators say. Some platforms acknowledge they're not always accurate at spotting AI, using phrases like Meta's "likely created or modified with AI" to hedge. For creators, even the suggestion that they've published AI content can feel damaging to their reputations.

Gregory Littley, who frequently posts photography to his Instagram, said several of his posts — which include scans of physical Polaroids — say that the "content in this post may have been modified with AI."

"I cringe when I see that label," Littley said. "I cringe even more when I know it's not true."

These labels could have real consequences for creators in a time of intense AI backlash. It's particularly relevant in the $12 billion US influencer marketing industry, where authenticity and human connection are paramount. An AI hiccup can turn an audience against an influencer. YouTuber Hank Green, for example, recently apologized after coming under fire for using ChatGPT to help research a script.

"It's literally the Scarlet Letter," creator Lissette Calveiro said about AI labels and accusations of producing AI-assisted work. Some brands have begun adding stipulations in campaign briefs that creators can't use generative AI.

In recent weeks, AI has been thrust into the center of the creator conversation. Substack's CEO took a shot at AI-generated LinkedIn posts while debuting a new AI detection partnership. Days later, LinkedIn announced a button to flag suspected "AI slop." YouTube has been pulling down channels that host "low-quality" AI content, and Snapchat has made videos wholly generated by AI ineligible for recommendation in its short-form video feed, Spotlight.

Both openly using AI and promoting AI companies are increasingly seen as risky in creator economy circles. The concern is warranted. Influencers who attended a recent luxury retreat hosted by OpenAI faced immediate online backlash.

"There's a PR issue with AI as it relates to taking people's jobs and environmental concerns around data centers," said Eric Bogard, CEO of the talent firm UnderCurrent Management. "Creators are hesitant to promote AI companies as a result."

At the same time, there's no real path of purity as an influencer traversing content creation in 2026. Nearly every platform automatically uses or pushes AI tools, from Adobe Photoshop to TikTok's CapCut. In many ways, AI tools have helped creators balance the workload of managing their social media accounts and brand deals, as well as brainstorming.

Companies like OpenAI want creators to be more open about their use of AI.

Charles Porch, who OpenAI poached from Meta this year to lead creative partnerships, recently told Business Insider that part of his job is getting creators to "come out of the closet" about using AI.

"Whether creators choose to share how they use AI publicly is entirely up to them," an OpenAI spokesperson said.

AI's 'PR issue'

AI is infiltrating many aspects of modern life — and content creation is no exception.

A May survey of 16,000 creators conducted by Adobe, in partnership with The Harris Poll, found that 75% of creators who had used or tried creative AI described it as "integrated or essential to how they work."

Not all creators want to admit that publicly, though, lest they wear the AI "Scarlet Letter" on their chest.

YouTube creator Billy Yue, who goes by 8illy, isn't shying away from AI. He even made a promotional video for Anthropic's Claude in November. Still, the creator, who regularly features hand-drawn animation in his videos, added a disclosure at the end of his most recent YouTube upload that "no AI was used" in the production. He wanted fans to know that he'd drawn 1,800 illustrations for the project.

Broader public opinion is shifting, and creators feel it.

The influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy found that the share of consumers who viewed generative AI as a "negative disruptor" increased from 18% in 2023 to 32% in 2025. Those who saw it as a "positive disruptor" declined from 34% to 31%. The firm surveyed 4,000 consumers ages 16 or older in the UK and the US.

"Part of this backlash is every platform is filled with slop," said Max Spero, CEO of AI detection startup Pangram. "It feels like the algorithms are shoving it in your face. It feels like it's harder and harder to find things made with craft by real people." Pangram recently partnered with Substack on an integration that detects whether — and how much — AI was used in writing newsletters and comments.

Concerns about "AI slop" have become a focus on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, which all have automated AI detection tools that help identify content that is either entirely AI-generated or substantially edited with AI.

Lawmakers have also gotten in the mix. The European Union and New York state recently developed laws requiring brands to inform viewers when AI-generated characters appear in ads.

AI labels aren't foolproof

As platforms have rushed to ramp up their AI labeling, creators like McGrady say they have become the victims of false positives.

Lindsey Lee Lugrin, a content creator and model, recently posted some paintings she had made by hand. However, her Instagram posts included a label that said they were "likely created or modified with AI."

In some instances, using popular editing tools like Canva or Adobe's Lightroom resulted in content on Instagram, Threads, and TikTok being flagged as potentially AI-generated.

While third-party platforms like Pangram can assist with AI identification, none are completely accurate. (Substack added options in its AI detection feature for creators to dispute a Pangram assessment, explain how and why they used AI, and even disable the tool altogether.)

Slip-ups can be a risk for both creators and brands.

McGrady said that if a post made in partnership with a brand was flagged as AI, it could "harm your relationship with the brand."

Advertisers are well aware of the public backlash an AI-heavy ad can bring.

Brands are taking proactive action to prevent this. Five creators and talent managers said there had been an increase in clauses in partnership briefs and contracts that explicitly state that creators cannot use AI in parts of the content process — particularly in scriptwriting, captions, and visual edits.

"If you're a brand, you obviously don't want to see an influencer you hire have a 100% negative comment section," said Jack Appleby, a relatively AI-positive creator and social media strategist. "If you're not an AI brand, you probably avoid AI right now, just because there's no reason to risk it."

There is no escaping the AI era

Despite the blowback, AI pervades many aspects of content creation.

Photo and video editing apps use it, whether loudly or under the hood. If you use Instagram's fancy font tools when making a Story post, it will trigger a tag that says the text has been "restyled with AI."

"It's really difficult to have a fully AI-free experience right now, no matter what line of work you're in," Calveiro said. "I think a lot more people are using it than they want to admit."

There are real benefits to some tools, too.

"I very frequently tell my audience that there are ethical and moral reasons to use AI. When I do, it's from an accessibility perspective," McGrady said. "But I am a person who proudly says that I do not use generative AI."

The backlash against creators' use of AI may ease in the coming months as AI-powered creative tools become ubiquitous. Labeling efforts could shift toward flagging only fully AI-generated posts.

More transparency about how AI is used could reduce headaches for creators and platforms alike, making room for them to explore how the tech can expand their creativity.

"I'm very honest about how I use AI," Appleby said. "I don't really run from it. If a piece of content entertains or educates or provides value to somebody, for the most part, they shouldn't really care."

• YouTuber Caleb Hammer drags people for their poor financial decisions on his show "Financial Audit."
• He revealed the one mistake he sees people make the most — and why it's not entirely their fault.
• He also shared what he splurges on, having paid down his own debt.

YouTuber Caleb Hammer has built a career digging into people's poor money decisions on his show, "Financial Audit."

He says there's one mistake he sees most consistently.

"It's the cars," he said during a wide-ranging interview with Business Insider. "People are obsessed with getting whatever big truck or SUV that has the new year on it. And they say it's the safety features, because, you know, we were making cars one year ago that were just killing everyone. So you've got to get the 2027 Ford F-150 Turbo edition."

Hammer, who also sells a budgeting app, Dollarwise, and financial education courses, conceded that it's not entirely people's fault that they fall into the car trap.

"You need to have a car to have a job, and you need to have a job to have a car," he said. "We have that endless loop because we have horrible public infrastructure in this country. We built everything around the car. So people are stuck in that loop."

Still, he said, people will also try to justify spending beyond their means on their "dream car."

"It doesn't make sense," he continued.

Hammer, 31, speaks from experience. He once racked up $120,000 in debt by paying for college, a car, and some impulse buys. He taught himself about money management, which inspired him to start his show.

Now, he has a mortgage and a modest amount of debt, and has shifted his priorities. He spends on the occasional dinner out, his dogs, and hiring good people for his company.

"I still love McDonald's," he said. "I try not to get it, and my girlfriend doesn't want me to because it's bad for me. But at least I can afford it."

Hammer said he doesn't see the financial situation of everyday Americans improving anytime soon, especially with the rise of buy-now-pay-later services.

"With Klarna being baked into everything and Afterpay, unfortunately, I have a feeling the show's going to be going till I'm done," he said.

Read our full interview with Caleb Hammer here.

One morning in January, Gracie Nielson was scrolling TikTok when she discovered something that made her skin crawl.

The fashion, lifestyle, and beauty influencer with over 600,000 followers noticed a comment on one of her videos that directed her to a clip of a woman wearing low-slung blue jeans and a yellow crop top. Her face didn't resemble Nielson's, but the exact same outfit was hanging in Nielson's closet, and even the woman's body struck a familiar pose. Nielson realized it was a shot-for-shot replica of a video she'd posted months prior, down to the backdrop — a corner of Nielson's home in California. Intrigue quickly devolved into unease.

"That's so crazy. This is my house. This is my body, just with somebody else's face," Nielson recalled thinking. "It's just a really uncomfortable feeling."

The other woman in question may not be a woman at all, but a digital echo: Sienna Rose, aka @siennarosely, describes herself as a neo-soul singer who has over 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Her TikTok page is filled with uncanny videos where the star smiles and vamps — but never talks — to the camera. Though she's been plagued by accusations that she's AI-generated, Rose has never performed live; AI detection tools used by the streaming service Deezer have flagged Rose's music as AI-generated. Emails I sent to the address listed in Rose's TikTok bio went unanswered.

It's Nielson's job to make videos, so she made another TikTok to share her reaction to the discovery. "I'm so scared, you guys," she said, comparing her video to Rose's since-deleted one. The TikTok quickly went viral, amassing over 2.4 million views to date — confirmation that Nielson's shock had reverberated far beyond her usual audience.

"I even had a friend text me that day, and she was like, 'I did not know Sienna Rose was AI,'" Nielson said. "She's like, 'I have listened to her music before, completely not knowing that this is not a real person.'"

AI influencers are here, and if Nielson's case is any indication, you may not have even noticed. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly sophisticated and accessible to the average person, employers, companies, and brands have begun investing in the technology to reduce labor costs. Number-crunchers aren't the only ones who are being replaced — creatives are feeling the heat, too. Now, there's AI music on the Billboard charts, AI used in Oscar-winning movies, and, of course, AI all over our social media feeds.

Just as influencers once stormed the internet — harnessing the then-new technology of social media to draw eyeballs, score paid sponsorships, and rake in advertising dollars previously reserved for traditional celebrities — digital avatars are now poised to flood the same market.

Ally Rooker, a part-time content creator with nearly 190,000 followers on TikTok, described having AI imitate real-life influencers to hawk products as nothing short of labor-busting.

"When I see influencers promoting generative AI video tools, I'm like, 'You don't understand the reason that you have a career,'" Rooker told Business Insider. "You don't understand how fragile what you're doing is, and how fragile your revenue is. Because you're promoting your replacement."

The multibillion-dollar creator economy was built on aspirational influencers who can promise their followers that a better life — or at least clearer skin, or a life-changing haircut, or a dream vacation — is just a swipe away. So what happens when a new crop of competitors is aspiration, personified: influencers who don't suffer from hormonal acne, bed head, or debilitating jet lag? Friendly, almost-human faces who don't need to eat, sleep, or even get paid?

AI influencers are already making money from brand deals

In a social media landscape where real people already use beauty filters and Photoshop, brands are going all in on artificiality. A 2025 survey of about 1,000 senior marketers in the UK and US from the social and influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy found that roughly 79% said they are increasing investment in AI-generated creator content. Grand View Research estimates that the global virtual influencer market will reach $48.88 billion by 2030.

Real influencers fear that could translate into a lot of lost income.

"Why would Maybelline pay a real person if they can just pay an AI person that looks essentially the same?" Rooker said, using the popular beauty brand as an example. "The person scrolling Maybelline's Instagram doesn't need to know who it is in the video. They just have to think it's a real person."

Right now, "think" is the operative word. Disclosure requirements for AI influencers remain murky, and lawful uses of AI vary from state to state in the US. While many AI influencers are labeled as such in their bios — Aitana Lopez, a pink-haired fitness and fashion influencer calls herself a "digital soul," while Olivia Brand, a blonde Alex Cooper knock-off who generates inspirational podcast clips on TikTok, calls herself an "AI it-girl" — casual scrollers on their FYPs can easily remain oblivious to the fact that they've encountered AI at all.

Even if someone like Nielson could make the case for a right of publicity violation — alleging that a third party has taken her name, image, or likeness and used it for a commercial purpose without permission — lawsuits are expensive, and a worthwhile payoff isn't guaranteed.

All of this raises questions about how human influencers can continue to make a living if brands begin to favor their visually pristine, easily programmable counterparts. Those fears aren't unfounded: The Clueless, the Barcelona-based agency that created Aitana Lopez, among other hyper-realistic AI "stock models," pivoted away from hiring humans in the pandemic, citing their unpredictability and inconsistency as motivating factors.

Now, Aitana has three full-time partnerships, including one with a Spanish salon chain. She was recently used in a Black Friday campaign for Amazon. The Clueless creative director Andy García estimated that Aitana's assets — including her brand deals, paid posts, and bespoke "skincare" brand, Vellum, which is actually a software program to enhance the skin texture of AI avatars — generate about $75,000 to $100,000 a month. Other AI influencers also boast thriving careers: Lil Miquela, one of the original digital avatars, has partnered with Prada and Calvin Klein; Xania Monet landed a multimillion-dollar record deal; and Shudu, marketed as "the world's first digital supermodel," has starred in campaigns for Balmain and Hyundai.

García doesn't see her company's creation and other AI influencers as job-killers, but rather hurdles real humans have the tools to overcome.

"Right now, AI influencers are really not a threat to real influencers," she said. "It's like any opportunity, to which real influencers can adapt."

Many people still prefer to follow humans over robots

While brands may enjoy the control and cost efficiency digital avatars afford, when confronted directly with the question of AI, many consumers remain unconvinced.

Comment sections online are full of backlash against AI-generated ads and digital avatars, particularly those that seem designed to blend in with real people. Sienna Rose has inspired numerous sleuths to comb through her videos for copy-and-pasted details. (Suffice it to say that Nielson isn't the only creator whose backdrops and body movements appear to have been cloned on Rose's page.) Others have gone viral for protesting AI creep in daily life, from bots replacing customer service agents to stumbling across fake influencers on their feeds. When they're not being fooled by AI, many are irritated by it.

Cameron Mackintosh, a part-time content creator based in Nashville, said she was shocked and dismayed when she was briefly duped by an AI influencer on Instagram — and, even worse, when she noticed that people she knew in real life were following the account. Her video about the revelation blew up, amassing over 1.7 million views and hundreds of passionate comments.

"I would never want to read a story written by AI. I would never want to read a book written by AI. I wouldn't want to consume a painting that was created by a computer," Mackintosh told Business Insider.

As Business Insider reported in October, consumer backlash to AI accounts is causing some brands to retreat from the tech. In February, The New York Times compared the AI boom unfavorably to the "dot-com boom," citing a 2025 YouGov survey in which more than a third of respondents said they were "concerned that AI would end human life on earth."

Allison Fitzpatrick, an attorney in New York with experience in advertising and influencer marketing, told me that concerns about intellectual property and copyright infringement — not to mention the demand for real-human relatability that made influencers a force in the first place — have translated to a lack of interest in AI influencers among the brands that she works with.

"I think the human audience, the followers, are smart enough to know that between an influencer who is human and can actually taste the product or go on vacation and stay at the hotel or fly in the airline," she said. "You're going to take the human influencer's endorsement far more seriously than an AI influencer who's done none of what I've just described."

Influencers are ready to fight back

Influencers like Nielson aren't giving up hope yet. They say leaning into reality, not realism, will be key to staying in business.

"A lot of content creators, people like to follow them because they are relatable — people sharing skin issues or insecurities, for example," Nielson said. "That wouldn't really happen using an AI avatar because it's not human. It's not real."

Emily Higgins, a North Carolina-based content creator who also runs a social media consulting business, told me that as high-production-value content becomes the norm, she expects to see a renewed embrace of scripting hiccups, grainy footage, and other deliberate imperfections.

"If something's too highly produced or too perfect-seeming, then immediately, it can be dismissed as AI," Higgins said. "We're going to see people trying to create more flaws in their content. We'll see more human, emotional, raw kinds of elements."

Some brands are already leading the charge. Dove and Aerie have vowed not to use AI in their marketing materials, using slogans like "Real People Only" and "Keep Beauty Real." Aerie, which stopped retouching its models in 2014 — putting stretch marks, blemishes, and body diversity front and center — earned its most popular Instagram post in a year thanks to its anti-AI promise. Meanwhile, Heineken and Polaroid have explicitly mocked AI and Big Tech in recent ad campaigns.

Influencing is often dismissed as a low-effort profession, but at its core, it's an act of vulnerability. To broadcast your face and feelings to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of strangers requires nerve and resilience, neither of which AI can reproduce.

As a result, Mackintosh said she expects people to begin seeking out creators and brands that put visible effort into the creative process.

"There's this novelty about human creation, and I don't think that will ever go away," she said. "I always think it will be appreciated. I just think there will be less and less of it because, economically, it will be easier to fake."