“It Will Undermine Trust and Authenticity” – Influencer Marketers Speak Up Against Deepfakes

POV: You’ve just launched an influencer-led campaign that you’ve spent weeks planning. You’re delighted with your work and excited to see the results. But two days later, a video surfaces of your influencer promoting a competitor’s product, and it’s receiving more traffic. The influencer swears to you that they haven’t worked with any competitors. What’s worse, the very next week, another video surfaces that shows your influencer going off on a hateful, hurtful rant. Now, the campaign is in tatters, as well as the reputation of your influencer and brand. Welcome to the deepfake era.

This is the kind of future that’s been making influencer marketers nervous as of late. This year has seen the conversation around AI explode, and for our purposes, we’ve seen a proliferation of use cases for the technology in the partnerships world. However, we’ve also seen a lot of talk about the risks that this technology poses to the space. Some of the biggest problems arise from deepfake technology.