← Ahead of the Curve with Coco Mocoe
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Did you know that in 1999, Alexander McQueen had one of the first integrations of robotics in a fashion show? Supermodel Shalom Harlow walked out to the center of the stage as two robots came to life. They painted her white dress as she resisted, then eventually submitted. She stood on a circle panel that spun as they squirted her with yellow and black paint. Yellow is the color of new beginnings, marking the new acceptance of technology that will eventually overtake the fashion world. But black is a color of foreboding and potential darkness. Opera music played as Shalom Harlow stumbled across the stage. As the audience roared, the black paint splattered across her face and chest looked as if it was blood, destruction and beauty all in one. Just like our relationship with technology. Since then, we've seen the rise of technology as a sign of status in the art world and beyond. Holding the newest iPhone has become a silent indicator of wealth or the desire to look like you have it. We have smart cars and smart homes. The release of the popular horror film Megan last year was a campy summation of our fears and desires around the advancements of technology. A humanoid doll becoming a dependable and predictable compan for a lonely child. But what happens when the technology begins to mimic human emotions? If their programming is to protect their human at all costs, what will they begin to do if they have no understanding of jail, consequences, ostracization or empathy? All of these things that humans understand and we act in a way not to jeopardize because of our social and empathetic nature. A few years ago we saw the rise of the first popular AI influencer called Lil Mikayla. She's a character that is meant to be of Brazilian and American descent. I think it is interesting that the media company that created her brewed it's B R U D. They made her part Brazilian as Brazilians are known for the fandoms of American celebrities. When I worked at Famous Birthdays, they built out a website in the Portuguese language before they did any other language like Spanish because of the web traffic coming from Brazil. Lil Miquela was created in 2016 with her Instagram reaching 2.5 million followers. She's had brand deals with brands like Calvin Klein and Prada and appeared in promotional videos with Bella Hadid. She's still actively posting and seems to have become more political. Her IG bio says hashtag Black Lives Matter and two of her recent posts were encouraging Americans to vote and then encouraging her followers to do a local beach cleanup. She recently did a brand deal with BMW and went to Paris with Vogue for their Vogue World fashion show. According to Wikipedia, users believe that she may have been created to look like British model Emily Beadour, but who knows if Emily is getting paid or if that is even the truth? No one truly knows her origin or what she's based off of. Is she completely CGI and edited as an overlay on pictures of popular destinations? Or is she a model who's physically there when they take the picture and then they edit her to look more CGI after? We still don't know the answer to that question. Her first controversy came in 2019 when she posted a YouTube video detailing her sexual assault. This was seen as insensitive that a media company was using a fictional character to describe a scenario that real women and men, everyone children unfortunately go through. But I do think it's a gray area because while no one gets mad if a fictional show has a fictional character, have a storyline of dealing with sexual assault, maybe people don't get upset because they know that the fictional character is fake and fake storylines are expected. But maybe the pushback on Lil Miquela was because they had blurred the lines between whether she was real or not. Singer Kehlani even made a post calling out Lil Miquela as a result of this controversy. Let me know your thoughts on this below in the comments. If you're watching the Substack video and if you're a member of the best selling Substack, you can watch it even if you're just a free member and you want to watch it@cocomoco.substack.com but if you are not on Substack, you're on Apple or Spotify. And whether you're free or paying, you can leave a review on Apple or Spotify. If you still want to contribute to this conversation. Was it ethical or not? I'm going to ask more questions throughout this episode as well regarding ethics and our thoughts on the future of technology as it emerges with influencers. Today's episode of Ahead of the Curve with cocomoko will be about what I believe is going to be the eventual rise of AI and robotic influencers by media companies, talent agencies, brands that will try to replace typical human influencers that we know of today. Why this would be cost saving for them, why there is less risk associated with a generated creator versus a real creator, but ultimately the one human element that they will never be able to replicate, I believe. And why I think that this is going to become so sought after by audiences and their comfort creators as we continue to blur the line between real and generated influencers and we reach a point where it becomes almost impossible to tell the difference. There might be a day where your favorite comfort influencer, like imagine if you're watching an Alex Earle or Risa Tisa and one day you realize that they were just like a sim created on a computer and they were never actually real. What that would do to you mentally, your relationship with that creator. Those are all things to think about. And again, you can leave those comments in the substack if you're a paying member or and we can continue it in the messaging or you can leave your thoughts in a review on Apple or Spotify because that helped me grow in the chart. So thank you. I'm so lucky to have made my substack platform earlier this year. Since then I've flown to New York City to meet with their team. I met the founder recently when he was in town which was so great. All of that was just something that I was curious about, learning a new platform and thank God I did because for the first time really it does seem like the TikTok band might actually come true and be more realistic. And if you guys want me to do an entire episode on that, I'm happy. I wasn't sure if you guys were tired of me talking about TikTok because I did an episode about it last week. So again, let me know in the reviews and or the comments on substack if you want me to do a whole episode next week on the potential TikTok ban. I'm curious to know what your thoughts are and I could still talk about it, so I'm happy to dive into it again. But thank God for Substack because it's really been my saving grace financially and just in terms of your guys support has really pushed me through one of the hardest years of my life. So thank you. As I said last week, I have never run an ad on this podcast ever. In the two years that I've had ahead of the curve, I've never run an ad and I've been reached out, but I turned down every single ad. And I don't want to say that it will never happen because if it's with like a brand I really love and it's integrated, maybe. But every single minute of this podcast that I've ever posted is for you guys to hear about the topic at hand. Whether you're listening to the first half, the free version, which is usually 20 to 30 minutes, or the full extended episode that sometimes goes up to an hour, I have stopped listening to even some of my favorite podcasts because I feel like there's an epidemic of podcasts just having so many freaking ad reads in them. There will be a podcast that I love. I'll click on a new 40 minute episode and then 15 of those minutes are ads. 10 minutes is an intro, 10 minutes is an outro. And yes, I'm doing a long intro in this one, but again, I'm not having any ads, so that's part of it. But that 40 minute episode, it ends up only being 10, 15 minutes about the actual topic at hand. And then they don't even actually talk about the topic. They just rehash what everyone else has already said without adding any new info or new insights or new perspectives. That is my biggest pet peeve. And that is why I've never run an ad on this podcast. And I hope you guys appreciate that. And part of the reason is because my substack has become a bestseller that I'm able to keep this going and just be content about the topic. So thank you, thank you, thank you, guys. I'm very. I genuinely can't say it enough. But back to the episode. Yay. Okay, today I'm going to be talking about the rise of technology's influence on art, the Internet, and our digital trends in the age of Aquarius. Are we going to see more fashion and online trends and influencers inspired by cyborgs and a blurring of the lines between what is real and what is human? What are the ethics of that? Why will brands lean into it from a financial and risk aversion standpoint? And how will human creators, models, human podcasters, be able to still have leverage over the rise of kind of what I'm calling generated influencers? The reason I'm not saying fake influencers is because I do think that just because something is CGI or computerized or like a sim, it doesn't mean that it isn't real. Where do we draw the line? Would an influencer who facetunes their eyebrows to be darker and their lips bigger, are they considered fake and generated or are they still real? What is that line? I will talk about the rise of generated influencers like Lil Mikayla as brands go to distrust influencers more and more because of the volatile name nature of Internet and cancellations. Plus, I will talk about why brands might lean into generated influencers more, or even create their own as a way to keep budgets low since they won't have to be paying a real human for their labor and then in the extended version of the episode, which will only be available to the paying members of the best selling sub stock, I will be talking about what trend I think will rise in tandem with generated influencers and why human flaws might actually become more sought after than ever before. Multiple trends often exist at once, sometimes completely opposite from one another, becoming popular at the same time. So those will be the topics today. I am super excited to dive into this, even though it kind of terrifies me the topic. So let's jump on in. In the beginning of this episode, I talked about early introductions of robotics and technology into the fashion world with Alexander McQueen's show in 1999. Humans have always been fascinated with the future of technology, with shows like the Jetsons becoming popular in the 60s and movies like Back to the Future becoming a cult classic. I remember one of my favorite movies growing up was Xenon. For any of my younger Gen Z babies listening, it was a Disney Channel movie about a blonde girl living in a spaceship. It took place in the future and I remember she had a little spaceship car. And I remember asking Santa for one for Christmas so I could fly around outer space like Xenon. And I told Santa that if this wish didn't come true, then I wouldn't believe in him anymore. That was the year I stopped believing in Santa. And I was so obsessed with Xenon and the future of technology and what it could mean that I remember I played soccer growing up and my soccer jersey that year I had them put Xenon as the name on the back, not my real name. We have seen the futuristic cyborg trend really reemerge in fashion the past couple years as well. In 2023, Copruni had Boston Dynamics robot dogs on the Runway. They were helping models take off jackets and hold purses. I believe these dogs are pretty controversial because they are also potentially either Boston Dynamics or a brand like it is getting pushback because they are potentially contracting. Again, everything I'm saying is like my own research and I don't know if it's fact because I'm not a journalist. So I always encourage you guys to do your own research in every episode. Just had to put that out there. But they are using these robot dogs and contracting them with the US government as a way to potentially patrol the borders. But the reason that that's scary is because anytime robotics get involved in warfare or conflict, how are those devices held accountable for committing war crimes or breaking the law or killing someone? How do you get justice on that? If it's A robot dog that you can just like, turn it off and then it doesn't understand being ostracized in a jail cell. It doesn't understand consequences. It's not a human that naturally has empathy and wants. Wants to be socialized into society. And of course, we still. Throughout all of history, humans have committed awful war crimes against each other. And so much of that is dehumanizing groups of people convincing yourselves that you're. They're not human like you. And that's a whole other topic. But the introduction of technology is really terrifying to me personally and what it can mean. And so I do want to add that even though Boston Dynamics dot dogs were used on this Runway around the same time, they were also being called into question for potentially their contracts with the US Government and patrolling the border. I had this thought as well when I was in LA earlier this week for an event and I was driving around, there were so many of those Waymo cars, which I remember seeing them when I was in San Francisco last year, where they originated. And they're the cars that are. Have no driver. So it's essentially like calling an Uber, except you sit in the car and. And you, like, there's no one in the driver's seat. You're just in the back seat and there's like an iPad essentially just like, talking to you and like, driving you around. Of course they're doing this to save on money because then they don't have to pay for the labor of, like a real life human being, the driver. And even though the technology might be really expensive in the beginning, like, over time, that is going to save the companies a ton of money. But I remember thinking as they were driving around the streets of la, like, if a Waymo car causes an accident or like, runs over a child riding a bike on the sidewalk and something awful happens, someone dies, who's held accountable? Like, the police can't arrest the iPad for manslaughter. Who is held responsible for something like that happening? But also, is it potential that maybe it is a good thing that these cars are automated? Because maybe robots are less likely to make flaws, that humans make certain mistakes that robots potentially won't. And maybe in 100 years, when we're telling our grandkids, like, we used to sit in the car and drive it, they're going to think that's crazy because everything is going to be automated and, like, no human is legally going to be allowed to actually operate a motorized vehicle anymore. I don't know. Those are things to think about. I think it's really interesting, but as I mentioned that the robotic dogs were on the Runway last year, I obviously have to add that there's not just this glamorization of them, but also questions around the ethics of them while their relevancy is fading. I think it's worth mentioning, but the Kardashians and Kim Kardashian recently did a photo shoot with a Tesla robot, and she posted a video of her, like, talking to a Tesla robot and making heart hands with it. Her old assistant, I believe it was her old assistant, went viral for walking through a suspiciously empty mall with Tesla robots behind her holding her designer name bags. The video seemed staged, and they walked unnaturally slow. There was coincidentally no one in the background of these videos in a huge mall, which makes me think that it was staged or, like an ad or an undisclosed ad, because why was there no one in the background of these videos? When you're in a huge mall, unless you're filming, like, in parts of the mall that you've closed off because you got a filming permit. Those are just things that I was thinking about. I thought it was really odd. It honestly does. Again, all speculation. It makes me wonder if the Kardashians and their associates potentially have some sort of stock or, like, vested interest in Tesla and specifically their new robots. I wrote about this in last week's Trend Report, but I could see Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk dating, and her using proximity, proximity to him, as a way to finally get her foot in the door of American politics. One of the last realms of the celebrity world that she has not been able to breach is politics. And I believe that she's tried because she understands it kind of puts you on a legacy status that reality TV can't get you. Politics is seen as people are critical of politics, but they respect the legacy and celebrity of politics because there's history there. Whereas the Kardashians are technically still considered, like, a newer type of fame. And so there isn't that, like, status or history there that, like, American politics has. So I believe Kim Kardashian wants to eventually get into American politics because it would be the closest she could get to that level of fame, but she's not really been able to yet. She's worked with Donald Trump, freeing inmates. She tried to get a law degree. I don't think that ended up happening. And she even at one point, tried to send the new mayor of la, Karen Bass, a skims gift basket, which Karen Bass turned down, according to the Hollywood Reporter. So again, those are all things that are really interesting. I'm getting off topic, but I wrote about the robots and Kim Kardashian's embracing of them in last week's Trend report briefly. So it's something that's really interesting. Maybe I'll make a TikTok about it. Back to robots and fashion. One of my favorite fashion looks of the whole year was when Zendaya wore the Mugler cyborg outfit to the Dune 2 premiere earlier this year. Katy Perry seemed to lean into a metallic cyborg look for the rollout of her recent album, but that did sadly underperform. I don't think it was because of marketing. I just think it was because the music simply wasn't good. Don't make people want to listen to your music. Make music that people want to listen to. I believe partly the popularity of the Dune franchise and its new movies this year was the public's obsession with the future of technology and how humans might try to adapt to a changing Earth that is warming up. What will happen when water becomes so scarce that we have to lick our tears if we cry because we can't afford to lose any water from our bodies that rely on it? In January of this year, Schiaparelli had a fashion show where a model carried a robot baby as she walked down the aisle. And it was inspired by the movie Alien, which again, another version of that movie came out this year as well. The creative director of the fashion house, Daniel Roseberry, had influenced of his Texas roots throughout the show with models wearing cowboy boots. And he had this integration of futuristic technology such as the robot baby. And it was really this like, nod to the Wild west. And yet it was this juxtaposition. We often think of the Wild west as directly associated with the brutalities, but promises of unexplored nature. Of course we know like, like, you know, natives are the ones that had explored nature. And when I refer to the Wild West, I'm talking about like the American expansion specifically and Manifest Destiny. So again, want to say that, but the Wild west is sort of thought of this like world with no laws, really ruled by nature, things that we don't know. And so he had these like cowboy boots that models were wearing throughout the show while they're wear while they're holding a robot baby in that juxtaposition, where in the past the Wild west was the expansion of America, but now the Wild west is the expansion of technology. And instead of the brutality but promise of unexplored nature, we're now looking at the brutality but promise of unexplored technology. I believe we will continue to see the influence of technology throughout fashion that will trickle down into to everyday life as a status symbol. We have smartphones and smart glasses and smart cars, but we will soon have smart purses and smart shoes. Everything will be marketed as smart. Heck, I freaking recently got sucked into buying a smart ring, which I kind of regret. It's not even like whatever. As we see the rise of technology in fashion, we will see the rise of technology and generated creators in the influencer space. I believe. I believe that these generated computer generated robotic influencers will take over the podcast world, the modeling world, the creator world. And so that is what this next topic is about. So here we go. Speaking of generated or unreal influencers gaining fame, this is a fun fact. The first ever influencer brand deal was for a creator named as lonelygirl50:15. She was a girl who began filming short videos from her bedroom at the start of YouTuber in 2007 and was often thought of as the first ever lifestyle creator. And vlogger fans slowly began connecting the dots that she was potentially born into a family that was part of a cult. In one of her videos in her bedroom, her camera quickly pans and shows a shelf in her room that had a shrine to a controversial religious leader. Eventually, fans of the first ever video blogger lonelygirl15, began to piece together that maybe she wasn't actually a real life girl in her bedroom, but was actually an actress on a set. The Internet tracked the IP address of, I believe one of her MySpace posts to a talent agency in Los Angeles. I was lucky enough to interview one of her creators, Greg Goodfried, last year on this very podcast Ahead of the Curve with cocomoco. It's still up if you want to listen to it. So lonelygirl15 was actually an actress that was hired off of Craigslist and it was part of an Internet experiment and build up hype for what would eventually be a scary short film. She was the first ever influencer to get a brand deal and it was with Neutrogena. So fun fact, the first ever brand deal was Lonely Girl 15 for Neutrogena. The reason I bring this story up when talking about the rise of fake generated influencers like Lil Mikayla versus what we know of influencers now as like real humans is because people in the marketing and creator world often harp on the word authenticity when it comes to their reasoning for why certain creators become popular. But I actually don't think authenticity plays a factor at all. And it's one of my pet peeves. Audiences, I don't believe, actually want authenticity from their creators. They might think they do, they don't. What they want is companionship and consistency. And if you're going to be a creator who grows an audience, part of that obviously is consistency. So I think when audiences are saying they want authenticity, what they mean is they just want a creator to be doing something that they somewhat enjoy and are comfortable with, that they can do it every single day and show up for their audience. So instead of authenticity, they just want consistency. And that was what lonelygirl15 provided in the beginning of YouTube and why she became the biggest lifestyle creator to ever get the first brand deal. And yet she was an actress hired off Craigslist. They would batch film these videos. She was posting consistently all the time. And it was that consistency that audiences were drawn to. There was no, like, authenticity. If authenticity is really a marker for what audiences want in a creator, how would you explain that the first ever influencer brand deal was literally a girl hired off Craigslist? So with that being said, if authenticity isn't really that important and instead it's consistency, could we see the rise of generated influencers? Similar to Lil Mikayla, brands often enjoy the ease and speed of working with influencers over celebrities. Influencers often charge less than a celebrity for an endorsement and they can turn around that video in as quickly as a day. And if the brand is lucky, sometimes those videos will perform even better views wise than them running a commercial that cost $100,000 on primetime television. But just as quickly as the brands can work with these influencers and reap the immediate rewards is just as quickly as they can fall and get embroiled in controversy alongside these very human and flawed creators. An example of this would be the quick rise to popularity that Broke Schofield experienced earlier this year with the virality of her Clinton Kaine story times on her TikTok and the canceled podcast alongside Tana Mongeau. She was going to the highly secretive aloe Gym in LA and working out alongside Jake Shane, Tate McCrae and Glen Powell. The canceled podcast during her stories about Clinton Cain was rising on the charts of Spotify. I think at one point it was in like the top five listen to podcasts in the world. She did an ad read for Alo Yoga on the podcast during this growing of virality and fame. She did a photoshoot for a brand deal with Morphe, the makeup brand and the sweatpants company boys Lie. But then within weeks of her peak of popularity. Fans unearthed tweets from her as recently as 2020 that were racist, including her disparaging the slain and innocent teenage boy Trayvon Martin over his murder by George Floyd. There were other racist tweets that genuinely took me aback. As a former fan of the podcast, I haven't been able to listen to the podcast since because of that. Aloe Gym Boys Lie and Morphe were just a few brands that began to get flooded in their comments asking for them to publicly distance themselves from Brooke Schofield over these Unearthed tweets. Within a week, her acceptance in the public eye and admiration had completely flipped Alo Yoga unfollowed her Morphe seemingly canceled the collaboration with her and Tana and Boys Lie even put out a public statement on their Instagram story condemning her and distancing themselves from her. This story happens often with creators, and I believe it is why brands are becoming becoming more and more afraid of working with them. I think part of this apprehension is also influencers realizing their worth and the rates they charge for brand deals. If you ever feel bad charging for a brand deal, one way to think about it is how much money they would be saving that brand if they had to shoot a commercial for the same exact product. So especially if they want to run that video on their platform and put ad money behind it. If you are a creator and they're paying you $10,000 for a 30 second video, imagine how much money it would have cost them to film a 30 second commercial. They would have had to hire a director, actors, camera crew, lighting, microphone, audio engineer, editor, producer. They would have had to book the set, they would have had to write the script, they would have had to then create the commercial and then spend potentially millions running it on commercial breaks. So your $10,000 is like what they would have paid in catering that day. So that's just something to think about. But not only will brands want to find a way to cut corners financially by launching or leaning into generated influencers that are created by computers and not real humans think of like a sim character, but I also think that we are going to see this happen with media companies and talent agencies. If they can create an AI or CGI generated creator with no history, no tweets to be unearthed, then there is really no chance that this is a flawed human that will have awful accusations come out about them. An awful past that often is unearthed during the peak of their popularity or what happens after the trauma of fame for a lot of celebrities and creators is sometimes they'll fall into substance abuse and make awful mistakes as a way to deal with this lifestyle that is very abnormal. It's going to be like a sim or a character that lives on a computer. The generated influencer will not ask for hourly rates. They the payment will instead go completely to the media company, agency or brand. It will not be like how agencies they only get like a 10 to 20% cut of the talent that they rep. Instead, the agency brands or media companies creating these generated celebrities will be able to keep the full 100% of the profits. We might also see actual brands launching their own generated creators, almost like a mascot of sorts to keep it in house. And if you think that audiences aren't completely open to the assimilation of computerized celebrities, I think there's going to be different versions of it. I think one is going to literally be like Lo Michaela's or they're going to literally look like sim characters. But I think that as technology gets better also they're going to look like real humans and we're going to find out later that they were not actually real. But one rising trend that really fascinates me is how on famous birthdays, the rising creators that users have been searching for on the site are actually Roblox usernames. Not just TikTokers or YouTubers that they can put a face to the profile, but Roblox creators. That means the new celebrities of Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z could be these digital avatars in these video games. And fans don't even know what the real person controlling this avatar looks like. Isn't that so crazy to think about? So it is something that is possible. The growing risk and price of working with influencers will be alleviated as brands begin to lean into generated craters like Lil Mikayla. But even little Michaela got canceled with her sexual assault salt story, so who knows? Lil Mikayla still has over 2 million followers and actively collaborates with high fashion houses to this day, so I don't think the cancellation affected her that much. As we see the rise of generated creators potentially replace real life creators, models and even podcasters who will be the creators that are immune to this transition. I'm going to talk about this in the extended portion of this episode, so if you want to hear me discuss that and a lot more, then you can become a paying member of my bestselling substack@cocomoco.subsac.com to unlock this in all of the episodes or if you just want to listen to this portion for free and you've made it this far. I appreciate you so much. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I would love to know your thoughts on this topic. So if you can't leave a comment on substack, if you want to leave a review on Apple or Spotify, let me know your thoughts. Do you think that generated creators will one day replace real life creators, models and podcasters or is that never going to happen? No right or wrong answers, just respectful discussion. So let me know. And if you are a pink coconut, I will see you.