Virtual Influencer Diversity: Who Actually Gets Represented

If a persona can look like anyone, you’d expect virtual influencers as a group to look like everyone. They don’t. Scroll the most-followed accounts on Instagram and the range is much narrower: young, feminine-presenting, thin, and styled somewhere between K-pop idol and fashion spread. There are exceptions, and a few are among the most talked-about characters out there. But the baseline looks more like a fashion casting board than a global census. Virtual influencer diversity is an open conversation, not a finished one. And the good questions sit underneath the visuals. Who gets cast? Who writes the character? Whose story is the persona telling?

What the top of the chart actually looks like

Take the accounts most brand teams know: Lil Miquela, Imma, Noonoouri, Aitana Lopez, Any Malu, Shudu. They’re more varied than a quick summary implies, with different skin tones, aesthetics and languages. Yet the template underneath is strikingly consistent. Most are femme. Most claim an age somewhere between 18 and 25. Most do fashion, beauty or lifestyle content, the categories advertisers pay the most for. That’s not neutral. It follows the money, which is also why human influencer rosters skew the same way. For a rundown of who’s leading right now, see our list of top virtual influencers.

The edges exist: male personas, older personas, plus-size personas, wheelchair users, characters with visible disability. They’re rare, though, and their followings tend to be smaller. The economics work against them. A fashion house that already books slim human models isn’t likely to fund a plus-size synthetic character it’ll use twice a year. Studios build what they can bill for.

Who is behind the character

What’s on screen is only half of it. Nearly every well-known virtual influencer has a team behind her, often 10 to 30 people, and who’s on that team shapes how the persona talks, dresses and handles issues. Miquela came from Brud, a Los Angeles startup with a mixed team. Imma is run by Aww Inc. in Tokyo. Noonoouri comes from Munich-based designer Joerg Zuber and collaborators. Aitana Lopez is from The Clueless, a Barcelona agency founded by Ruben Cruz and Diana Nunez. Some studios publish who’s on the team. Many don’t.

So on any campaign, ask two questions, not one. Who does this character look like? And who’s writing them, and does that team actually share lived experience with the identity on screen? A Black character written by an all-white team turns out very differently from one whose writers, artists and voice actors include Black creators. Neither setup is automatically disqualifying. But the industry discloses very little, and audiences are asking more often.

The Shudu question

Shudu Gram is at the center of the field’s most cited controversy. British photographer Cameron-James Wilson created her in April 2017. She’s portrayed as a dark-skinned Black woman, styled after Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech, and her creator is white. Critics called it digital blackface. Their argument: a white photographer building and profiting from a Black woman’s likeness, in an industry that already under-books real Black models, isn’t neutral, even if the intent is artistic. Wilson has said publicly that he welcomes the debate and that his interest is in the technology. He’s since moved Shudu into an agency, The Diigitals, which has cast more characters of color. Thoughtful people still disagree on whether the setup is exploitative, complicated, or just how synthetic media works. The Wikipedia entry for Shudu Gram outlines the debate. The bigger question is still open for the whole industry.

Why does one persona matter so much? Because Shudu set the template for every choice after her. Cast a Black virtual influencer whose whole team sits somewhere else on the identity spectrum, and the Shudu question comes right back. Same for East Asian personas built with no East Asian writers, Latine characters built without Latine consultants, and so on. There’s no agreed rule. There is a growing expectation that studios will say something about it.

Gender beyond the default

The gender range is widening, slowly. Most top-tier virtual influencers are femme, which tracks where fashion and beauty money goes. A few characters deliberately break that mold. Bangkok Naughty Boo, created by Thai fashion designer Adisak Jirasakkasem in 2020, uses they/them pronouns and was launched specifically to model a non-binary future for Thai fashion, as the WIPO case study documents. VTuber culture in Japan and Korea has always had male, non-binary and animal-ish characters. So the anime-style side of the field is a lot broader than the photorealistic, Instagram-first side.

That leads to two points. One: people who don’t see themselves in the top Instagram accounts often already have communities elsewhere, especially on YouTube and Twitch. A fair look at representation can’t stop at Instagram’s top 30. Two: the studios that embrace non-default gender expression are usually smaller and less funded. Which brings it back to money. The field looks the way it does partly because the funding looks the way it does.

What the research actually says

Academic work on virtual influencer diversity is early, but it’s useful. A 2024 study in the International Journal of Advertising, Diversity in the digital age, looked at how consumers react to virtual influencers across race, gender and body type. Reactions shifted noticeably depending on how well the persona, the product category and the viewer seemed to match. Other research has studied how Miquela, Imma and Shudu express intersectional identity in captions and interactions. Sometimes they reinforce dominant norms. Sometimes they gently push back.

Across studies, one finding keeps showing up. Diversity by itself doesn’t predict engagement or trust. The story around the character does. People respond better when a persona’s identity is part of a coherent narrative, with detail and context, than when it’s a demographic swap. That’s a design lesson more than a marketing one, and most human casting directors already know it.

Diversity as design choice, not garnish

For brands and studios, the most useful shift is to build diversity into persona design from the first character bible. Don’t treat it as a color swatch painted onto a finished asset. Write the identity into the backstory. Staff the team so someone with lived experience is in the room. Be straight about who’s behind the character when people ask. And push back on the safest possible cast, because that’s exactly what produced today’s baseline. For a wider look at how synthetic and human creators compare here, our piece on virtual influencer vs real influencer covers some of the trade-offs.

The field is young enough that none of this is locked in. New studios in South Africa, Nigeria, India, Brazil and Southeast Asia are making characters that widen the picture, and audiences clearly want personas that look like their own communities. Whether the top of the chart catches up comes down to who funds what over the next few years.

FAQ

Are most virtual influencers women?
Most top-followed virtual influencers on Instagram present as femme, mainly because fashion and beauty drive the sponsorship money there. On YouTube and Twitch, where VTubers rule, the gender range is much wider. So the answer depends on which platform you look at.

Is creating a Black virtual influencer as a non-Black creator considered problematic?
Creating a Black virtual influencer as a non-Black creator is contested. Some critics call it digital blackface, especially when the character makes money without real involvement from Black creatives. Others say synthetic personas are art anyone can make. Shudu Gram is the most cited case, and the argument is still going.

Are there non-binary or trans virtual influencers?
Yes. Bangkok Naughty Boo (they/them) is one of the most cited examples, and VTuber culture in Japan and Korea has lots of characters outside a traditional gender binary. Representation is still patchy. Still, the field is broader than Instagram’s top charts make it look.

Does virtual influencer diversity actually change engagement?
Research is still early. A 2024 International Journal of Advertising study found consumer response depends on the fit between persona, product and viewer, with identity as just one factor. Coherent storytelling and category fit seem to count for more than diversity on its own.