We all wish we could be in two places at once. One of us clocks in at work, while the other does the laundry and finally sees the dentist.
But for Ayushi Anand, a filmmaker in Mumbai, India, this is her reality.
Ayushi, 35, created an AI clone of herself that is now a fashion icon and film star, raking in thousands of pounds a month.
She shares her social media accounts with her artificial avatar, with the pair having 16,600 Instagram followers and hundreds of LinkedIn connections.
Ayushi (the flesh and bones one) has been on Instagram for more than a decade.
Her feed was once filled with grainy photos of family holidays, modelling photoshoots and #photooftheday sunrises.
Now, her page is her AI double going for cocktails ‘with the gals’, making breakfast or beaming that ChatGPT has generated new hairstyles.
‘There’s literally nothing you don’t look great in 😱😍🤩✨✨,’ said one of Ayushi’s followers, while one said it’s ‘unbelievable’ that the content is AI.
‘I like to say I’m a “synth human”,’ the co-founder of Kalpanik Films, a creative studio in the Mumbai suburb, Andheri West, tells .
‘For myself, it was the ultimate way to live our company motto: a seamless blend of AI and human innovation.’
And it’s proved to be a successful formula. The avatar was voted ‘AI Personality of the Year’ in April, with users congratulating the model and saying how ‘proud’ they are.
Now and then, though, Ayushi uploads photos of her physical self, speaking at conferences or wishing colleagues happy birthday.
‘I have a pulse – but my digital twin does the heavy lifting’
Ayushi coded a phoney twin to help prevent burnout, says Vishal Yoman, Kalpanik Films CEO.
The team uploaded high-resolution images of Ayushi pulling expressions or showing the angles of her face to the storytelling AI tool, OpenART.
They make the content glossy using the studio’s film post-production tools, while using software to clone Ayushi’s voice so the avatar can speak.
Kalpanik Films had already manufactured two AI influencers, Ira Somani (a ‘digital soul’ bringing ‘IRL vibes’) and Mantrika Krishna (its Instagram bio says it can ‘talk, listen & see’).
For Ira and Mantrika, the studio created ‘bibles’ describing the persona’s appearance, personality, childhood, family tree and worldview.
Yet Ayushi’s character uses her human counterpart’s memories, identifying patterns in it to generate text that sounds like Ayushi said it.
‘If her avatar is interacting with people online, it doesn’t sound like a generic chatbot because it’s trained directly on her syntax, her actual movie preferences and her real-life journey as a female tech founder in India,’ adds Yoman.
Ayushi splits her workload with her photorealistic twin, which acts as a brand ambassador and models the latest image-generation upgrades.
The ‘hybrid’ account makes up to £6,600 a month from brand collaborations and bringing in new clients.
‘While I have a real pulse,’ the non-AI Ayushi says, ‘I also have a digital twin that does a lot of the heavy lifting.’
Most people can’t tell if a person is real or fake, experts say
More than one in two social media users follow a computer-generated influencer.
Users are three times more likely to engage with them than humans, according to VirtualHumans, an AI influencer directory.
That is, if they even realise they’re following a bot. Two in three can’t tell an AI-generated face from a real one, experts previously told Metro, while a recent study found people similarly struggle with AI-generated text.
Many of them – or rather, the companies behind them – embrace the unrealness. Ayushi’s account, for example, is listed as an ‘AI generated profile’.
Plus, it’s not hard to guess; Ayushi’s replica is in a US diner one day and Paris the next.
But not all AI personalities are as upfront, which worries Jake Moore, a global cybersecurity advisor at the software firm ESET.
Some synthetic influencers pretend to be real customers to peddle janky supplements, scam apps or products that don’t even exist.
Moore says users now need to not only check if the product they’re buying is real, but the person selling it, too.
‘Algorithms tend to reward content that performs well, not necessarily content that is honest,’ says Moore.
‘As we enter a world where the person recommending a product may not even exist, it makes it difficult for people to know what is genuinely authentic.’
Brands aren’t prohibited from posting AI-generated promotional content without disclosing it, the UK Advertising Standards Authority told .
‘Our existing rules could require disclosure where an AI influencer is presented as a real person, if this creates a misleading impression,’ the regulator said.
‘Ultimately, the issue we would look at is whether the ad itself is misleading, rather than the use of AI being inherently problematic.’
Ayushi agrees. She feels no shame at having ‘India’s first synth human’ in her bio or sharing the prompts – instructions to AI models – that generate the images of her artificial twin.
‘This is a completely new wave of work and the audience respects the craft and the technology much more when you are honest about it,’ Ayushi says.
‘There’s no need to hide the tech when the tech itself is the art.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
MORE: Paedophile who used AI to undress children was allowed to return home overlooking playground
MORE: The government is keeping a list of people who question their policies
MORE: Meta reveals camera-free version of ‘pervert glasses’ after backlash