Endless Thread - RIP Lil Miquela

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

In 2016, followers flocked to an Instagram user purporting to be Miquela Sousa, a 19-year-old Brazilian-American model, singer, and sometimes activist. For years, no one was quite sure if Miquela was made-up, or to what degree. Was she a model rendered doll-like by filters? An actress? A totally fictional character? Her ambiguous humanity helped Miquela land lucrative brand partnerships with the likes of BMW and Calvin Klein. But in recent years, interest in her has been slipping. Writer Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan joins Endless Thread to talk about Miquela's mysterious origin story, and what her declining relevance reveals about our current relationship with AI. You can read Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan's essay, Death of the Artificial Influencer, here. Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The host is Ben Brock Johnson.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Mercedas, do me a favor and give us what we would call self-ID, so who you are, where you are, what you do. My name is Mercedes-Gonzazz Gonzalez-Bezahn. I'm based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I'm a writer and researcher, and I've worked across different areas of media, podcasting, editorial, social media, all of that. And you're a real human. I am a real human. I am a real Okay. Me too.

Real humans, myself, and Mercedes-Gonzalez Bazan were talking about an essay that Mercedes wrote for the writer Anne Friedman's newsletter. The essay was about an influencer named Michaela Sousa, also known as Lil Michaela. Lil Michaela has 276,000 subscribers on YouTube. What's up, McAlians? And 2.6 million followers on Instagram. Do I know what's going on? No. But that's never stopped me before.

She's had brand deals with BMW and Calvin Klein. She's interviewed celebrities, and she's only 19 years old, kind of. Unlike Mercedes, Michaela is not a real human. She's a fictional creation from a virtual reality and AI media studio called BROD. Not brood, brud. Virtual influencers are becoming more popular. because of their targeted approach toward younger audiences. Just a few years ago, people were speculating that virtual influencers like Michaela were going to be the future.

And if I am a brand that wants to hit those audience, she's a great ambassador because they look up to her or they're fascinated by her. But that never happened. Today, we're going to find out why. From WBUR in Boston, I'm Ben Brock Johnson, Roland Solo today, and this is endless thread. Today we're talking to Mercedes about the mystery behind Lil Michaela's origin story and why she thinks Lil Michaela's time is finally up. So can we start off by having you read the beginning of your essay, The Death of the Artificial Influencer? Can you read some of that for us? Yes.

Every so often, I awake with a sudden urge to check up on Lil Michaela. If you're not like me, regularly consuming pop culture, like it's a food group, you might be thinking, who? Michaela Sousa, or Lowe Michaela Online, is the most followed and well-known AI influencer. She was created in 2016 by Brud and Media and Technology Company. I became fearfully fascinated by her in 2018, briefly envious of her in 2019 when she spent an afternoon eating ice cream with Omar Apollo, and shamefully consumed by her content in the spring of 2020 when I conducted academic research on Michaela. She's existed for almost eight years now, but the everlasting 19-year-old seems to be aging out of

relevance. Why would you be ashamed you're doing academic research? That's the perfect excuse to be doing what you want to do. That's so true. I think I have a background of media studies and a lot of that is focused on pop culture and internet culture specifically like viral content. And I think there is a part of me that's just a little embarrassed about that talking about whether it be a viral meme or talking about this person who a lot of my friends didn't even know existed until I wrote that paper. You're like, no, this is important. I swear to God. Exactly. I'm like, no, I'm not just scrolling on Instagram. Okay, so we're going to get to Michaela's obsolescence, but can we start off with an explainer for the people who are saying who?

Who is Lil Michaela? Yes, she is an AI influencer or a CGI robot who is released in 2016. and since then she's grown a large following across social media and also had a small music career. And she's mingled with celebrities and even had a human boyfriend a few years ago. The company who created her used this vague explanation of who she was for years.

And it was just like this public Google doc when you went to their website. And it said, is Lil Macalah real? And their response was as real as Rihanna, which goes into so many other questions about celebrity culture and fandom and just like, what does this mean? It's so weird.

Ambiguous is kind of like the best way to describe her. Can you describe her physically? When I look at her, I guess what I see is like someone who's young, they're doing a skin routine, either that or they're blessed with great skin. I don't know. She has thick eyebrows. She looks like an Instagram model of right now to me. Yeah, exactly.

And that's definitely her point. her image is very much a caricature of Gen Z, and she's supposed to be racially ambiguous. She's supposed to be Brazilian-American, but how so many people assume she's other ethnicities or whatever. At the beginning, I guess her image was really trying to uncover whether she was just a model who used a lot of filters or if she was actually a computer-made figure.

They really were never clear for a long time. And now they've kind of said she's a fiction, character. She's a robot. But for years, nobody really understood what she was supposed to be. They didn't know if she was just a girl wearing a lot of makeup and using a lot of filters or if she really was fake. And now I think she looks a lot more digital, a lot more cartoonish. But in 2016, a lot of that can go different ways. How did she get so popular? Like, if I'm a real person who's like, I'm going to get popular on Instagram, like, that seems like a lot of. lot of work. Do you have a sense of the sort of like mechanics of that? Like how did they blow up

little Michaela online? She had such a great niche. People were going to her page to try to crack the code of uncovering who she really is. And leading with that mystery really helped them and benefited her whole brand. I was going to say, I want to do that. I want to like lead with just being mysterious and see if I can get popular, see if that works out for me. It probably won't. Can we talk about some of these seminal little Michaela moments? Yes. The seminal little Michaela moments are she apparently went to Coachella and interviewed real

life celebrities. And I think we want to hear a little bit of that. What's up guys? It's Lil' Michaela hanging out with YouTube music here at Coachella. And I'm joined by JPEG Mafia right now. Thanks so much for hanging out. Yeah, no problem. So you just got off a U.S. tour with Finn Staples.

Tell us a little bit about that. And your favorite part about it or the most memorable moment. This is so weird to listen to because, like, when she sort of stumbles over memorable, like she sounds very real. How would you describe her mannerisms?

Did videos like this make her seem more real? It's hard because so much of her is supposed to, directly relate to Gen Z. So a lot of the phrasing are like popular terms from Gen Z in what was this 2018, 2019. This is reminding me of Tay, like that that chatbot that Microsoft built for Twitter. Ooh. I guess like the idea that like she's like putting out these like familiar mannerisms and words that like, you know, are frequently used by a certain generation, which Tay was also programmed. to do, right? And that ended up getting very weird. That's so true.

Michaela did something Tay could not do. She made out with Bella Hadid in an ad. Yes. Which seems tricky to me because Bella Hadid is, as far as we know, a real human. A human. And fighting the good non-appearance-based compliment fight, which is an episode that we made recently. How was the ad overall receive? People were uncomfortable.

Online. No, not many people. like seeing it. I think it's almost that thing. You know how they won't put wigs on robots? Because then humans get too uncomfortable that it's so uncanny valley. I think that kind of came up. I love that that's like a rule. Like don't put the wigs on the robots because the humans really freak out if you do that. Don't do that. That's the pitchforks are coming out if you put a wig on a robot. It's true. It's too far. I had no idea that was a rule. That's amazing. But it's also like I'm now I'm turning into like an old man about this and I'm like, why don't we know the answer? Let's get to the bottom of this because it seems crazy that Lil Michaela would be able,

her team would be able to navigate getting a real celebrity to make out with Lil Michaela and none of that information somehow getting out. Like their NDAs must be ironclad. I know. That's what's so frustrating is because she interacts with so many celebrities and she's supposed to be in public so much. So I really don't understand what's going on. Do they just have like a Michaela model there who everyone who knows anybody knows that that's Michaela or I just want to be inside the loop. I need to be in there.

Yeah. This is like a big foot thing or something. We need to like spot her in the wild somehow. It's true. And I wonder if they have different. models or if they just have one? I feel like if they had different ones, then it would have been revealed already. There are so many people online who their only hobby, it seems, is to uncover like when something is edited incorrectly or trying to just catch them in the lie.

How is the internet not solved this mystery yet? I don't think the internet cares about Michaela very much anymore. And I think that's why no one's interested in it. Wow. Okay. So we're going to come back to that. But Mercedes, in 2019, Lil Michaela released a vlog saying that she had been sexually assaulted in a ride share. Yes. Now, let's listen to that. And just a note for listeners, Lil Michaela is describing a fictional but disturbing experience here. Anyway, I called a ride share because we love a sustainable budget-friendly moment. The car pulled up outside my house and I'm getting in when I'm immediately gagged by the smell of like, Jasmine Air freshener mixed with old man farts.

The only save was my Queen duo on the radio and the foamy Malibu Coast, but then I noticed the other rider wouldn't stop staring at me. Like, okay, sure, I looked cute in my club 404 tennis skirt, but this stare was less, I think you're cute, and more, I'm confused by what you are, and I deserve to find out. Best believe that after a minute or so, this motherfucker has the audacity to lean in so close that I can literally smell his breath as he whispers,

Are you real? I hear this question, IRL, and in the comments every day. I mean, it's rude, but I can usually get over it. But this particular weirdo had this weird-ass smile and just felt way too comfortable in my space. Like, taking man-spreading to a whole new extreme. I smiled and nodded, trying to brush it off. I turned the other way and looked out the window.

Then, sure enough, I just feel this guy's cold, meaty hand, touch my leg, as if he was confirming I'm real. His hand literally lingers there rubbing my skin. All right, well, that's terrible. I guess in this moment, my reaction to that is like, you probably shouldn't pretend about these kinds of things. And also, it feels a little rape fantasy-ish to me

in the way that it's constructed. what was the response to this video? It's now been taken down, and people were not happy. A lot of people were stating the facts of that she's just co-opting stories from victims and really not taking these experiences seriously. And it's just, it's all fiction when it comes to Michaela. So to make a fictional story of such trauma and then just dumping it onto her audience, just seemed so unfair to her audience and just, I don't know, just horrible decision-making.

So in 2020, Lil Michaela signed with CAA. Can you define CAA for people who don't know? It's an agency based in Los Angeles, and it's usually for entertainers, public figures, and now, AI. And influencers. Okay. What was the chatter about what that meant for real-life influencers? Well, at the time, she signed in May 2020. So my hunch was that it was all because of pandemic fear.

And it was lockdown and signing and AI felt like the easiest and safest option for brands to keep going. And they also hinted at Michaela venturing into acting at the time. But I haven't seen anything besides her BMW commercial from last fall. I find this to be fascinating and very creepy because I also saw some writing about this, and I can't remember in this moment if it was from you or others, but folks talked a little bit about, you know, the fact that she is ostensibly a person of color or represents a person of color, and it seems like a very weird world in which brands could hire a fake person of color to, represent them when there are real people of color and people, you know, all sorts of different

kinds of people who are already looking for that work. That's so true. That's a whole other element of this. And yeah, like what jobs can she take? How much power does she have? And what, where is that going back to? It's going back to Brod. And her creators don't look anything like her from my research. What do they look like? They are... If you tell me it's a bunch of white dudes, I'm going to be so disappointed. It is mainly white people have bred from what I've seen, and they're all older. They're all probably Gen X, maybe Gen X millennial cusp. Oh, God.

This is getting worse by the minute. Oh, no. Don't you think? I mean, yeah, it's all new to you. I've been here. It was always worse. It was always bad. Fair.

It's true. All right. We're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to take a quick break. And then we're going to talk a little bit more, a little bit more about Lil Michaela's true identity and why you are writing her obituary. All right, hang tight. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science.

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Become a thought leader. recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at wbUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, so Mercedes, let's talk about Lil Mikaela's creators a little bit more. Right. And what we know about her origin story. So can you talk about her creators? Yes.

So she was created by Trevor McFedgerie's, who, is also the co-founder of bread. It had to be a Trevor, didn't it? It had to be a fucking Trevor. Exactly. And he's a DJ and music producer. Ah, even worse. To me, he must be behind all the remixes on her Spotify these days.

Oh, gross. Okay. Yeah, she was created in 2016 and it was a hectic time here in the U.S. because of the election. It was crazy in the UK because of

Brexit. And I think she was just made really as just this interesting digital distraction at a time of political chaos. Well, I hate to give Trevor any more airtime than Trevor deserves, but let's listen to some Trevor on the A16 Z's podcast. I had fallen in love with this data set around a show called Will & Grace that I love. It said that like Will and Grace was largely responsible for gay marriage in the U.S. that public polling was tied to the ratings of that show. And so it seemed like there was an emergent new media, social, visual platforms that could be used for telling fictional stories. And that was really the dream.

Can we tell stories that are as engaging as a Kardashian or Jake Paul, but kind of imbue these ideologies that make for a more tolerant, empathetic world? Okay. So for the record, obviously, the 2006 study that Trevor is maybe referring to here did show that Will and Graham, reduced prejudice against gay man among viewers, but not that it was responsible for the legalization of gay marriage. This is typical tech bro behavior suggesting this. That being said, what signs of that social mission do you see or have you seen in Michaela's content overall? I think her whole brand is to be socially aware,

and she's supposed to be incredibly candid. she'll have posts and where in the caption she's ranting about politics or just current social dilemmas. But really, she's supposed to connect with such a large audience. She's supposed to be kind of the every girl of Gen Z that all of her activism is really surface level. And how could it not be? I mean, she exists in a computer. And she's also supposed to be 19. So how much is what she's saying really of interest to people beyond her audience?

I don't know. I've never found anything she said to be of quality or I'm not going to little Michaela to learn. So that's how I feel. In the same Andreessen Horowitz podcast interview, they discussed how they created Michaela and how they picked her ethnicity and age because they felt both of those demographics were underrepresented in the media. You know, you're probably closer to Gen Z than those dudes were or are. Do you feel like they hit the mark, at least initially, in creating a realistic 19-year-old?

Does it track? Does she seem legit? No, I think she looks like what someone of their age would assume a 19-year-old accent looks like. Ooh, say more, say more, say more. her Brazilian American identity and her racial ambiguity really I don't know to me it looks more like those posts from the early 2000s where it would just show like a tan girl with curly hair and green eyes and say this is what the future is going to look like and that's kind of what they're reframing it to be and I don't know if that's a way to connect with more of an audience to make her more relatable because she's not

just like a blonde white girl. She's in the middle. She's somewhere in the middle. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah. But even the age 19 is so ambiguous too. You are technically an adult, but you're not even 20. It's not like she can be photographed out. She can't get an alcohol sponsorship. And I think that's so interesting too, because 19 is such like the doorway into so-called adulthood, but you're still a teenage girl. Yeah, that's weird. That's a weird choice. Yeah. Because she should be 21 so you can get that sweet sweet like alcohol money. Exactly. And if you're going to, I guess, like infantilize her or something, then why did they not make her 18? I guess I shouldn't, I'm not trying to advocate for that. I'm just like, I don't know. It's weird.

19 seems like a weird choice. It is weird. It seems incredibly intentional. And I heard a statistics once that once you're two weeks out of high school, you're already. behind on trends. So I think that's why they wanted her as close. That hurts. Yeah, exactly. That hurts. I think they wanted her as close to high school age as possible. And I don't know, 19 is such a strange time anyway.

I think Olivia Rodrigo can attest to that. Well, there's a pop culture reference I actually understand. So thank you for that. I appreciate that. This brings us to 2024 in the essay that you wrote about the death of Lil Michaela and artificial influencers in general. Why did you decide to write an obit? I noticed that there's just been such silence around Michaela. Her BMW commercial should have been big. I don't know. I think a few years ago would have been bigger.

But yeah, I think the reframing of her recently has been interesting. For years, her whole brand was around relatability and connecting with our audience, trying to be as human as possible and saying, I'm just like you, even though I'm a robot. So that otherness really wasn't the focus, where now it seems the shift is to be framed all around the otherness. And also, like, her social media has been lacking. She has not been as active. So I was like, I think she's really falling off. She's not posting? Not as much as she used to. Well, she's like light particles. I mean, you know, She should have time to post. Come on. Exactly. She hasn't been vlogging, no YouTube videos. Oh, man. Music as far as I can see. And what is she even doing with her life? Exactly. Where is she? I just, I don't know. I felt that she was really falling off. And I wanted to showcase that because four years ago when I first started doing research on her, she seemed to be peaking or on this road to more success. And I wanted to know what was happening now. I know people talked about her as the potential death knell for human influencers.

And I think in your essay, you talk a little bit about Pinky Doll, and we did an episode about, like, humans acting like NPCs. I love Pinky Doll. Ooh, ice cream so good. And I wonder, like, why, like, there aren't a gazillion Lil Macalas. Like, why do you think that didn't really happen? and why haven't they all replaced all of the human influencers? I think in 2020 there I started to see an uptick in AI influencers, but they were all brief.

And I think it's because their niche is, what is this? Like, really it's confusion and they really want their audience to be confused. But after that, they don't really have anything. And once that novelty of their AIS is gone, then why would they go? viral anymore. What's interesting, where a human influencer has the ability to grow and evolve in different ways. And I mean, the whole influencer market is still up in the question as far as longevity. It's still so new. So who am I to say? Like how long is influencers will keep at it? But as far as her and all the other AI influencers I've seen, they really don't have longevity.

And I think it's because at the moment of their creation, they're almost like a new car. Like once you drive it off the lot, it's not going to have the same worth anymore. And when you're created at a certain time, once that technology evolves, what are you doing? Oh, boy. In your essay, you talk about meta's celebrity look like chatbots, like this one named Billy, who looks and sounds exactly like Kendall Jenner. Hey, guys, it's Billy. I just want to introduce myself.

I am here to chat whenever you want. message me for any advice. I am ready to talk and I hope to talk to you soon. So you've already talked a little bit about this. We jumped ahead. But like, even though there's not a zillion new Michaela's, there are some new Michaela's like Billy. What do you think the existence of these types of bots mean for Michaela? I think it's just going to lessen the interest in Michaela even more because people already have a relationship to these celebrity faces and these figures. And though even if you're chatting with Billy, who is an AI, it may seem that you're chatting to Kendall Jenner. I think the celebrity factor, all of these people have that foundation of that.

And Michaela doesn't, her relationship with her audience and her fans is still on the newer side. There's no nostalgia factor with her. there's no closeness. And I don't know. I think her lack of social media, too, has made it even more distant with fans. Do you think they're just retool in her? I think so. I think there have been some hints on her social media that something new was coming.

She's had this longing for wanting to age recently. And I think it aligns with her BMW ad because all of that was about separation from human life and her connecting with this car. and like looking sadly out at humans interacting with each other and having these full lives. But I think it really aligns with the culture right now. I mean, look at the Barbie movie this summer. That tackled the mortality of a plastic figure. So I think Michaela is adopting that whole idea now. And even Oliver Rodrigo, she's been our teen pop queen and now she's in her 20s.

So she's not forever 19 either. That's what it seems to be going at. like they're going to change her age soon. It's interesting because I get the messaging and at the same time that seems to be a great example of why she's clearly not a real human because I think like, I don't know, like at least by the time I was 19, I didn't need to grow older. I was like, you know what? I'm good here.

I'm good here. We can stop here. I feel like little kids want to be older, but did 19 year olds really yearn for being older? I don't know. That seems weird. I think they yearn to be 21 in the U.S. And I think that's it. And she's been 19 since I was 20.

And I think it's about time she grows up personally. Or she can just dissolve into the ether. I don't really know. Mercatus, thank you so much for talking with us about Lil Mikaela. And please keep us posted on all of the updates, even though they seem few and far between these days. Yes, thank you so much. I love talking about this. It was great to be here.

That was Mercedes-Gonzalez Bazan. We linked to her essay, by the way, death of an artificial influencer on our website, WBUR.org.org slash endless thread. And after we talked to Mercenaz right before this went to air, Lil Mikaela announced on Instagram that she had, quote, turned 20. So she's not dead yet. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

This episode was produced by Grace Tatter and hosted by Yours truly, Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jenkowski. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and dudes named Trevor. If you know the real identity of Lil Mikaela or you are Lil Mikaela or your name is Trevor and you don't deserve to be teased about it, you can email us Endless Thread at WBUR.org. See you next week.