Virtual Influencer Gen Z: Why Younger Audiences See Them as

In May 2025 the marketing platform Whop published a study: about 40 percent of Gen Z social media users follow at least one virtual influencer, and roughly a third have made a buying decision because of one. That’s fast adoption for a creator format older people still call off-putting. The same character who looks “fake” to a 45 year old can look “honest” to a 19 year old. They’re staring at the same Instagram grid. They just mean very different things by authenticity. Here’s why.

The Headline Number: 40 Percent of Gen Z Already Follow One

The Whop survey, reported by Digiday, put the share of Gen Z following a virtual influencer at around 40 percent. For this group, Lil Miquela, Aitana Lopez, and dozens of regional VTubers are just another kind of creator in the feed. Not a novelty. And attention turns into buying: about one in three respondents said a synthetic character had pushed them toward a purchase.

Older age groups aren’t keeping pace. In similar data, older respondents are more likely to call virtual creators uncanny, distracting, or untrustworthy. The gap is too sharp to blame on novelty alone. Gen Z is running a different test for what counts as real.

What Authenticity Actually Means to Gen Z

Authenticity means something different to Gen Z than to Millennials, according to a multi-generational qualitative comparison published in De Gruyter. Gen Z participants described it as personal connection, vulnerability, and a match between what a creator posts and the values they say they hold. Millennials in the same study leaned on professionalism, polish, and looking editorially credible.

Seen that way, a virtual influencer gets easier to defend, not harder. She doesn’t claim to be a person who really eats the protein bar. The team is upfront about building her. For a Gen Z viewer who values transparency, that can feel more honest than a human creator pretending a sponsored post is something they just happened to find.

This is the generation that turned de-influencing into a content genre. The same instinct that makes someone call out a fake review also, oddly enough, gives an openly CGI character the benefit of the doubt. Being honest about the construction now does the job polish used to do for older audiences.

The Disclosure Gap (and Who Notices)

The disclosure gap shows up as soon as you measure who actually realizes the account is synthetic. The Influencer Marketing Factory virtual influencers survey found that about 42 percent of Gen Z and Millennial respondents follow a virtual influencer without realizing at first that it’s virtual. That’s a big share. And it muddies the neat story that Gen Z picks transparent CGI characters because they like transparency.

The data points to two kinds of followers living side by side. One group knows she’s synthetic, sees that openness as a plus, and stays engaged. The other never caught the disclosure cues and is reacting as if she were human. Both land in the same engagement number. On a dashboard, both look like product-market fit.

For more on where disclosure is heading, the virtual influencer disclosure write up covers current FTC guidance on AI labeling. Short version: the bar for clear disclosure keeps going up, exactly because audiences can’t always tell what they’re watching.

Why “Constructed” Reads as Honest to Younger Eyes

Constructed content reads as honest to Gen Z because of how they grew up. Their creators used filters openly, set up ring lights, batch-recorded a week of TikToks in one afternoon, and flagged brand deals in the first line of the caption. They assume social content is constructed. That’s the starting point, not a betrayal.

So to this group, a photorealistic human creator who won’t admit to their editing process can look like the dishonest one. A CGI character whose bio says “made by The Diigitals” is doing what the audience assumes everyone does anyway. Just out loud.

A 2025 Gen Z perspective published in the Journal of Nonprofit and Public Sector Marketing found something close to this. When Gen Z respondents felt a virtual influencer matched the identity they aspired to, they said they wanted to “model” her, even knowing she was synthetic. The bond didn’t depend on thinking the avatar was a person. It depended on her standing for values the viewer recognized.

That fits a wider pattern in how Gen Z thinks about virtual influencer authenticity. They’re not asking “is this person real?” They’re asking “is this point of view consistent?”

Where the Goodwill Has Limits

Gen Z’s goodwill has limits, and it would be wrong to say they accept every virtual creator. The research keeps pointing to two breaking points.

One is human mimicry that hides itself. Photorealistic avatars that play into being mistaken for people, especially in sponsored posts, get the worst reactions. In qualitative studies, Gen Z participants said they’d feel “cheated” or “disappointed” by a sponsored campaign from a human-mimic virtual influencer they’d taken for real.

The other is a bad brand fit. When a synthetic character pushes something that needs lived human experience behind it (medical treatments, parenting advice, grief products), the gap between persona and pitch becomes obvious. She stops reading as honest, because the honesty was always about owning what she could and couldn’t credibly speak to.

So Gen Z’s permission is real, but it comes with conditions. The character has to be open about being a character. And the message has to be something a character can believably carry.

What This Means for Anyone Building a Persona

If you’re building a persona or partnering with a virtual creator, three takeaways.

Don’t hide the construction. Put the studio name in the bio, show the team in the occasional post, and label sponsored content so nobody can miss it. The people who find you honest are the people who already know.

Use consistency as your stand-in for authenticity. Gen Z is watching whether the persona stays the same across posts, whether she keeps standing for the same things, whether her voice is predictable. That’s much easier to measure than a vague “feels real” score, and good creator teams call it brand discipline.

Accept that some of your audience will miss the disclosure. Make content that still holds up for the person who never noticed she’s synthetic, because the FTC, platform policies, and more and more the audience itself will hold you to that standard anyway.

Vinfluencer’s own work in AI companion software starts from a similar idea: a synthetic conversation partner is most useful when it’s honest about what it is and consistent in how it shows up. What makes virtual influencers credible to Gen Z is the same thing that makes any AI persona feel like a presence worth keeping around during your week.

FAQ

What percentage of Gen Z follow virtual influencers?
A May 2025 study by the marketing platform Whop, reported by Digiday, found that about 40 percent of Gen Z social media users follow at least one virtual influencer. Around a third said they’d bought something because of one.

Do Gen Z followers know virtual influencers are not real?
Not always. The Influencer Marketing Factory survey found about 42 percent of Gen Z and Millennial respondents follow a virtual influencer without realizing at first that it’s virtual. There are two groups: people who know and value the openness, and people who never caught the disclosure cues.

Why do younger audiences see virtual influencers as more authentic?
Qualitative research suggests Gen Z judges authenticity by consistent values and openness about how something is made, not by whether the creator is “real.” A character who openly says she’s CGI can seem more honest than a human creator hiding their editing.

Are there cases where Gen Z rejects virtual influencers?
Yes. The pushback centers on photorealistic avatars passing as human in sponsored posts, and on personas selling things that need lived human experience to endorse believably, like medical treatments or parenting advice.