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Ever since photo-realistic AI-generated images became possible, social media has been flooded with AI-generated influencers. Especially since this AI influencer went viral for making $10k/m (likely a lot more now).

Now the easy, lowest barrier to entry approach is to create your own AI influencer. Now whilst it’s still possible to make money doing this - everyone else is doing this too, so you have an insane amount of competition. On top of that, more people are aware of AI influencers and can easily spot them.

There’s also a question of ethics and a level of creepiness to some AI influencers - but there are definitely ways to do it where you’re not crossing any ethical boundaries.

I’m sure most of you are aware of the saying: "During a gold rush, sell shovels." The saying is a metaphor for capitalizing on the demands created by a boom, rather than participating directly in the boom itself.

And that’s precisely what we’re going to explore in this breakdown. There are plenty of YouTube videos and blogs on how to create an AI influencer but not many go into how you can sell the shovels

So let’s jump in and make some money!

What problems do AI influencers and girlfriends solve for their audience:

Problems people creating the AI Influencers and girlfriends face:

Opportunity #1: Create Your Own AI Influencer

Now this opportunity has the most competition as it has the fewest barriers to entry (as I touched on at the start) but it’s still possible to make money with this and stand out from the rest, here’s how:

Opportunity #2: AI Influencer Agency

Influencer and modelling agencies play a pivotal role in scaling a model's career by providing professional guidance, access to a broader network, and opportunities that might not be otherwise available. They also help with content, PR, advertising and other marketing activities plus handle contracts and sponsorships.

They also take a substantial cut of the revenue along the way (it can be as high as 40%).

The AI influencer space is no different - in fact, it might need even more help than regular influencers as literally anyone can enter this market regardless of skills.

Also, as it’s such an easy market to enter, the vast majority of people (the ones that don’t achieve much success in this industry) are generally quite lazy and lack the skills to scale their creations. This means an agency could come in on a revenue share model and help them scale.

These AI creators will need help marketing, attracting sponsors, monetizing through subscriptions, and creating and scheduling the posts, etc.

Alternatively, you could create your own army of AI influencers that you manage as an “agency”. You then handle all sponsorships and contracts from an agency perspective.

Opportunity #3: OnlyFans for AI Influencers

One of the biggest reasons people want to enter this space is to get a piece of that lucrative OnlyFans income. But OnlyFans can be a bit of a tricky place for AI content.

Fanvue has since come out as an AI-friendly platform in its place. But there’s still room to create your own and compete as it's very early days. It’s also not solely focused on AI content, it’s only about 15% of their revenue.

You can make an Onlyfans clone quite easily using white-label software like this.

Here is a list of existing OnlyFans alternatives so you are aware of what’s already out there.

This guy met someone who spends $10k/m on AI girlfriends. On top of that, Hentai is one of the biggest categories in porn. Check out some of these stats (it’s searched more than Marvel). So the market for AI-generated OnlyFans content is massive.

You could participate in creating the content or you could create the platform that enables people to sell the content. OnlyFans is valued at over $18b and brings in over $2.5b in revenue a year.

Opportunity #4: License Source Material for AI Influencers

One of the biggest challenges people creating this type of content face is finding real-life content they can use legally.

People normally find any video online that roughly resembles their model and then they add the AI model’s face over it using tools like Akool. However, this is generally illegal (or at the very least highly unethical) as it’s stealing other people’s content without their approval/consent.

But you could create a library of content with a variety of different models that have given their consent. This library could be updated regularly with fresh content and users would pay a subscription fee to access it. The models you use for the content could also receive a licensing fee

You could also add a clause that they’d have to stay subscribed for their license to remain valid - for example, if they signed up and downloaded all the content and then unsubscribed they wouldn’t have the license to use any of the content after their subscription ends.

You could also tie this in with the below opportunity if you’re looking at ways to expand even further.

Opportunity #5: A SaaS for Creating & Managing AI Influencers

There a quite a few SaaS products that allow you to create AI influencers and there are quite a few platforms that let you manage social content but there doesn’t seem to be anything that does everything

For example, you could build a SaaS that encompasses the entire creation, growth and management of these influencers:

It can mostly just be a productized API like how Keiran did here.

I would start slow with this - for example, I’d just start with the AI content generation stuff first and then slowly add more features as you grow.