Synthetic Influencers and AI-generated Commercial Content: Is It Time for a Conceptual and Regulatory Recalibration?

By  Silvia A. Carretta, PhD and Dr. Branka Marušić

Synthetic Influencers are no longer sci-fi curiosities. They are already adopted by many brands as scalable marketing tools that help sell products by mimicking human behaviour and interacting with users online. AI-generated personas like Lil Miquela, fronting campaigns for Prada and Calvin Klein, and Lu do Magalu, partnered with Samsung and Red Bull, now command millions of followers and operate at a scale no human creator can match without the support of AI tools. But behind the glossy avatars sits a tangle of unresolved legal questions  that test the limits of EU law: hidden advertising, audience deception, opaque accountability across operators, brands, platforms, and AI providers, and overlapping obligations under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, DSA, GDPR, ePrivacy Directive, and the AI Act. When the influencer is not human, do the old rules still hold, or has the regulatory rulebook finally started to creak? This post unpacks the fragmented EU framework, the key risks, and why conceptual recalibration may now be unavoidable. 

This article is written by Silvia A. Carretta, PhD and Dr. Branka Marušić

Silvia is a qualified lawyer with over 10 years of experience in platform regulation, EU digital law, and AI governance. She serves as Senior Legal Engineer at Newcode.ai and lectures on EU Internet Law and Digital Business Models at Copenhagen Business School. Silvia earned her PhD in Law and AI from Uppsala University as part of the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program; Humanities and Society (WASP-HS) Graduate School in Sweden. Her doctoral research examined the governance of digital content and the challenges that AI poses to traditional regulatory frameworks. She writes and speaks regularly on the intersection of EU digital regulation, platform accountability, and emerging AI technologies.

Dr. Branka Marušić is an Associate Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at Stockholm University and a qualified Croatian lawyer. She holds an LLD in IP Law from Stockholm University, and her research centres on the harmonisation and codification of EU law, with particular emphasis on intellectual property, copyright, and digital markets. Branka has authored numerous scholarly publications, including work on copyright law and the legal concept of communication to the public in the EU. Her commentary engages with the evolving boundaries of EU copyright law and its application in the digital environment.

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Synthetic Influencers and AI-generated Commercial Content: Is It Time for a Conceptual and Regulatory Recalibration?

A recent phenomenon emerging from the rapid expansion of generative AI is the rise of so-called “synthetic influencers” on online platforms. These are wholly virtual personas, typically rendered as computer-generated characters, used in marketing communications to promote products and services. Often operating through dedicated social media accounts, they are programmed to act autonomously, creating and promoting AI-generated commercial content at scale while interacting with unsuspecting users.

For marketers, the appeal is significant. Synthetic influencers offer scalability, consistency, and control that human influencers cannot match. For regulators, however, their rise poses a more difficult question: do the rules built for human influencers still work when the influencer is not human at all?

Meet the new faces of advertising

Among the most prominent synthetic influencers are Lil Miquela, who has appeared in advertising campaigns for fashion brands such as Prada and Calvin Klein, and Lu do Magalu, a creation of Brazilian retailer Magazine Luiza. Lu has partnered with major brands including Samsung and Red Bull and operates her own YouTube channel with millions of followers.

Synthetic influencers rely on AI-generated commercial content either to  promote their operators’ own brands (as with Lu do Magalu) or to endorse third-party products (as with Lil Miquela). Either way, the commercial logic is the same: a virtual persona generating content at scale, deployed to engage audiences and drive product promotion.

Why the old rulebook starts to creak

Within the EU, synthetic influencers are often treated under existing regulatory frameworks applicable to human influencers. The underlying assumption is that AI systems are merely tools extending human creativityand reflecting intentionality and authorship. In other words, AI functionsas a means of content creation rather than as an autonomous actor. 

Several characteristics, however, suggest that synthetic influencers may sit at the edge of - or beyond - current regulatory boundaries. They can simulate realistic human interactions with remarkable fidelity. They can produce content at scale with minimal or no human intervention. And they have an explicit economic purpose: generating engagement to promote their operators’ brands or third-party products. Together, these features introduce significant regulatory complexity and raise serious concerns about audience deception and opaque accountability.

A fragmented European regulatory framework

EU regulation in this area is already fragmentary, comprising a complex set of rules that overlap and intersect with one another. At the foundation sits the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (2005/29/EC), which addresses hidden advertising and misleading commercial practices in business-to-consumer relations. This is complemented by the Misleading and Comparative Advertising Directive (2006/114/EC), which governs misleading business-to-business advertising and sets out the conditions under which comparative advertising is permitted. Alongside these consumer and advertising instruments, the eCommerce Directive (2000/31/EC) imposes advertising identifiability obligations, while the more recent Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) builds on that foundation by introducing additional advertising transparency requirements tailored to the online environment.

Depending on the form and distribution of the content, the Audiovisual  Media Services Directive (2010/13/EU) may also apply, extending the regulatory perimeter to include media-specific obligations. Data protection law adds a further dimension. The GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) is engaged whenever synthetic influencer operations involve the processing of personal data - through tracking links, pixels, direct messages, giveaways, and audience profiling. The ePrivacy Directive (2002/58/EC) becomes particularly relevant where communications metadata are used for advertising purposes. Layered on top of all of this, the AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) and the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act may introduce additional obligations specific

to AI-generated content.

The result is a layered regulatory framework in which multiple instruments may apply simultaneously to a single synthetic influencer campaign. This further results in unclear responsibility allocation across the influencer marketing value chain - from operators and brands to platforms and AI providers. 

The legal questions that need answering

Several fundamental questions sit at the heart of any serious assessment of how synthetic influencers should be regulated. These questions cut across consumer protection, data privacy, platform governance, and AI law—and they remain largely unanswered.

1. Hidden advertising and identifiability.

Existing rules require commercial communications to be clearly identifiable, but it remains uncertain whether those rules adequately address content produced and disseminated by a virtual persona designed to interact with unsuspecting users. The simulation of human interaction introduces a layer of deception that may not be fully captured by traditional disclosure requirements.

2. Allocation of responsibility across the influencer marketing value chain.

The marketing value chain typically involves operators (who control the synthetic influencer), brands (who commission campaigns), platforms (where content is distributed), and AI providers (who supply the underlying technology), with each playing distinct but interconnected roles. Current frameworks do not clearly allocate responsibility among these actors when a synthetic influencer acts autonomously, creating gaps in accountability that may leave consumers without effective recourse.

3. Audience deception. 

The capacity of synthetic influencers to simulate realistic human interactions raises concerns that go beyond traditional questions of paid endorsement or undisclosed sponsorship. When audiences cannot distinguish between human and synthetic actors, the nature of the deception shifts fundamentally, from undisclosed commercial relationships to misrepresentation about the very identity and agency of the communicator.

4. Data protection laws. 

The processing activities typical of Synthetic Influencer operations sit at the intersection of the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive. These activities include tracking links, pixels, direct messages, giveaways, audience profiling, and the use of communications metadata for advertising purposes. The automated and scaled nature of these processing operations may intensify compliance risks, particularly where consent mechanisms and transparency obligations are concerned.

5. Interaction between instruments.

Consumer protection law, media law, platform governance, and data protection law each apply to different facets of the same phenomenon. The AI Act and the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act may add further layers of obligation, creating a regulatory environment in which compliance requires simultaneous navigation of multiple, overlapping frameworks. The absence of clear coordination mechanisms between these instruments compounds the difficulty of determining which rules apply, how they interact, and how conflicts should be resolved.

Key legal risks and implications

The deployment of synthetic influencers exposes operators, brands, platforms, and AI providers to a converging set of legal risks. These include (1) enforcement action under consumer protection law for hidden or misleading advertising, (2)  exposure under the Digital Services Act for failures of advertising transparency, (3) regulatory and reputational risk under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive in relation to tracking, profiling, and metadata-based advertising, and (4) potential obligations under the AI Act in respect of AI-generated content.

The implications extend beyond direct sanctions. They include contractual exposure across the influencer marketing value chain, where the absence of clear allocation of responsibility increases the likelihood of disputes between operators, brands, platforms, and AI providers. For consumers, the principal implications concern three interconnected risks: the risk of undisclosed commercial intent, the difficulty of distinguishing human from synthetic

interactions, and reduced transparency over how their personal data is

processed during synthetic marketing campaigns.

Towards a conceptual recalibration?

The regulatory framework governing synthetic influencers remains complex, evolving, and marked by an unclear allocation of responsibility across the influencer marketing value chain. The central question is whether the existing EU consumer, media, platform governance, and data protection laws are capable of adequately addressing the legal status of synthetic influencers and the AI-generated commercial content they disseminate, or whether their commercial use exposes regulatory gaps that call for conceptual or legislative recalibration.

Stakeholders operating synthetic influencers should take several concrete steps. These include (1) mapping their activities against applicable regulation, (2) documenting the human oversight and editorial control exercised over generative AI outputs, (3) ensuring clear and prominent disclosure of commercial communications, (4) labeling the synthetic nature of the persona, (5) reviewing data protection and ePrivacy compliance in relation to tracking and profiling activities, and (6) clarifying contractual responsibility across the value chain.

These questions are no longer purely academic. As synthetic influencers become more visible, more autonomous, and more commercially significant, the answers will shape how European law protects consumers, allocates accountability, and adapts to the realities of generative AI in the marketing space. Regulatory clarity is now urgently needed.

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Silvia A. Carretta and Dina Blikshteyn

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