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AI is reshaping digital culture through two different interfaces: the public social-media feed, where a synthetic persona performs for an audience, and the private chat, where an AI system responds to an individual. Both can feel like social presence, but virtual influencers and AI companions are not the same kind of product—and evidence about one does not establish how people use or are affected by the other.
How virtual influencers differ from AI companions
A virtual influencer is a computer-created persona presented to a public audience through social posts and other content. An AI companion is a system a person talks with directly, often for social, emotional, personal, role-play or assistance-related purposes. One is chiefly a public-facing performance; the other is an interactive exchange.
The difference matters because the design and commercial questions differ. A virtual influencer can be planned, edited and deployed by the people or organization behind it, even when audiences encounter it as a character with a consistent identity. A companion can respond in a way that feels personal, but a conversational style is not evidence that the system has human feelings, intentions or a mutual relationship with its user.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors| Question | Virtual influencer | AI companion |
|---|---|---|
| Where the interaction happens | Public social platforms, through posts and persona performance | Direct conversation between a user and an AI system |
| Typical cultural setting | Audience, fandom, creator culture and brand communication | Personal social or emotional conversation, role-play or assistance |
| Main commercial and governance questions | Who created the persona, what it endorses and whether sponsorship is disclosed | How engagement is monetized, how conversations are handled, who can use the system and what safety measures apply |
| Evidence covered here | A 2024 peer-reviewed study of 33 Instagram virtual influencers and general FTC influencer guidance | U.S. adult and teen surveys, a 2025 FTC inquiry and a 2026 UNICEF policy brief |
What counts as an AI companion?
There is no single survey definition behind every reported figure. In a survey published by the Imagining the Digital Future Center and Elon University Poll in September 2026, “AI companion users” means people who used large language models for social, emotional and personal purposes. The project surveyed a representative sample of 1,000 U.S. adults. Its landing page reports that 27% of internet-using U.S. adults have social interactions with large language models.
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That is a broad measure of social interaction, not a count of people who say they use a chatbot specifically for companionship. It should not be compared as though it measured the same behavior as Pew Research Center’s narrower “for companionship” response option. People may also use the same chatbot for different purposes at different times; general use alone does not tell us that someone treats it as a companion.
How common is chatbot use—and how much of it is social?
Pew Research Center surveyed 5,119 U.S. adults online from February 17–23, 2026. It found that 49% had ever used AI chatbots and 24% reported using them daily. Pew’s reported ever-use figure was 33% in 2024, but that earlier question was asked only of adults who had heard at least a little about chatbots. The figures suggest wider use, but the difference in question population is a caveat to a direct comparison.
Pew reported the following chatbot use by product name. These figures describe respondents’ use, not exclusive use or companion use.
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| Chatbot | Reported use |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 44% |
| Gemini | 24% |
| Copilot | 17% |
| Meta AI | 14% |
| Grok | 8% |
| Claude | 6% |
| Character.ai | 3% |
Those adoption figures do not mean that most chatbot use is relational. Pew found search and work were the most common purposes. It reported that 38% of employed adults used chatbots for work tasks, while 13% of U.S. adults used them for news, 10% for emotional support or advice and 4% for companionship. The 10% and 4% figures are separate reported purposes, not estimates of the same group.
What teen use tells us—and what it does not
Pew surveyed 1,458 U.S. teens aged 13–17 and their parents online from September 25 to October 9, 2025. Among teens, 16% reported using chatbots for casual conversations and 12% for emotional support or advice. These are self-reported behaviors from a U.S. survey; they do not diagnose a problem or establish that chatbot use caused harm.
Regulators and child-rights organizations are examining questions that those usage figures cannot answer on their own. In September 2025, the Federal Trade Commission announced a 6(b) inquiry into consumer chatbots acting as companions. It sought information from seven providers about character development, engagement monetization, safety testing and monitoring, age restrictions, disclosures to users and parents, and the handling or sharing of conversation data. A 6(b) inquiry is a wide-ranging study without a specific law-enforcement purpose; the announcement is not a finding that a company broke the law.
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UNICEF’s June 2026 policy brief considers child-rights risks and regulatory responses in six jurisdictions, current as of May 2026. It also offers recommendations for businesses, while stating that those recommendations do not replace compliance with applicable national law. The brief is an international policy lens, not evidence that one set of rules applies everywhere.
Are virtual influencers real—and who controls their identity?
Virtual influencers are real as published digital personas, but they are computer-created rather than human people. A 2024 peer-reviewed study in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications examined 33 virtual influencers on Instagram, showing that they are an established subject of marketing research. The study’s existence does not establish how well virtual influencers perform commercially or how audiences respond to every persona.
The central cultural tension is between a designed identity and the impression of an individual character. A team can control a synthetic persona’s appearance, biography, voice and posts, while followers may interpret continuity in those details as personality or intention. That makes authorship and control important questions: audiences may not know who is making decisions, whose interests a persona represents or how much of its apparent life is scripted.
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Lil Miquela is one prominent example cited in the research literature, but current follower counts, campaigns, revenue and particular brand partnerships are not established by the sources covered here. Nor do these sources demonstrate that virtual influencers outperform human creators, replace creative workers or produce a particular return.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Can an AI influencer advertise a product?
A synthetic persona can serve as a public-facing endorser, so a paid post raises familiar questions about sponsorship and audience understanding. The Federal Trade Commission’s general endorsement materials say that an influencer’s connection to a brand may need disclosure and that a disclosure should be clear enough for people to notice and understand. That is general influencer-marketing guidance, not a separate legal code written specifically for virtual influencers.
In practice, the relevant questions are whether there is a material connection the audience should know about and whether the disclosure is sufficiently clear in the context where the endorsement appears. A synthetic identity does not remove the underlying issue: viewers still need to understand when content is advertising and who is behind the persona.
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What changes as digital culture moves from feeds to conversation?
The feed and the chat invite different kinds of attention. A feed presents a persona to many people at once, in a public setting shaped by audience response, creator culture and advertising. A companion interface addresses a user directly and can sustain a back-and-forth exchange. That shift can make a synthetic system feel more personally present, but perceived intimacy should not be confused with human understanding or a reciprocal relationship.
The evidence available so far is stronger on reported use and policy questions than on long-term outcomes. The adult and teen surveys measure self-reported behavior at particular points in time; the FTC inquiry identifies topics for scrutiny rather than proving harms. These sources do not settle whether AI companions change loneliness, mental health, relationship quality or social skills over time. The responsible conclusion is therefore narrower: public synthetic personas and conversational AI are expanding forms of mediated social presence, but their uses, risks and effects need to be assessed separately.
Quick Recap
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