How AI-Generated Influencers Exploit Celebrities to Sell Synthetic Nudes

Late last year, the Instagram account @ayannasoblack began posting images and videos of a young woman with a strikingly dark complexion, which she attributed to "South Sudan Genetics."

On December 7, the account posted a photo of her in bed with a man that looked exactly like porn star Johnny Sins. The next day the account shared an image of her and The Rock inside a Planet Fitness, attracting over 525,000 likes.

On Dec. 12, @ayannasoblack scored an even bigger hit with a three-pic slideshow of her and actor/wrestler John Cena in the gym. It received over 3.2 million likes.

The celebrity pics helped the account quickly gain hundreds of thousands of followers, many of whom swooned over her looks and bikini pics. “Ugh she’s gorgeous,” said one comment with thousands of likes.

She’s also AI-generated. @ayannasoblack is one of half a dozen synthetic influencers with roughly 1 million collective Instagram followers that have posted fake photos with celebrities in order to grow their following, Indicator found. All but one of the accounts had a profile on Fanvue, an OnlyFans competitor that allows AI generated content and personas. People can pay to view explicit photos or videos and, presumably, to chat and request content from the AI-generated women. Most of the Instagram accounts did not disclose that they’re synthetic. They also appeared to manipulate their bios on Fanvue in order to partially conceal that their content is AI-generated. 

The accounts show how the failure of platforms like Instagram to enforce policies around AI labeling and authenticity has enabled fake influencers to exploit celebrity likenesses to build audiences — and to cash out by baiting followers into paying for synthetic nudes.

The accounts identified by Indicator posted synthetic images with celebrities and public figures including Sydney Sweeney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Andrew Tate, Jeffrey Epstein, Elon Musk, Danny DeVito, Mike Tyson, and Jake Paul.