Vodafone Ad Features AI-Generated Influencer

During a recent trip to Germany, I opened TikTok and encountered a Vodafone advertisement featuring a presenter who likely isn't real. Several clues point to her being an AI-generated creation: her hair moves unnaturally, moles appear and vanish, and her facial expressions carry an unsettling, uncanny valley quality. Vodafone confirmed my suspicions in the video's comment section.
When a viewer questioned why the company didn't use a real person, Vodafone responded—according to a machine translation of the German text—that it was "testing different advertising styles, this time with AI." In another comment, the company noted that "AI is now so integrated into daily life that we're exploring its use in advertising as well."
The ad certainly grabbed my attention, though primarily because my brain immediately detected something was not quite right.
This isn't Vodafone's first experiment with generative AI in marketing. Last year, the telecom released a commercial where every scene was AI-generated. Meanwhile, artificially crafted influencers are gaining traction. As reported by the New York Times, examples like Lil' Miquela—a digital persona developed by Dapper Labs—have already starred in campaigns for brands such as Calvin Klein, Prada, and BMW.
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Comments (2)
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That AI influencer’s hair physics is giving me uncanny valley vibes. Vodafone really thought we wouldn’t notice the disappearing mole? 😂 Maybe they should’ve spent less on the algorithm and more on a real model.
Ça devient flippant de voir des publicités avec des avatars IA qui ressemblent presque à des vrais humains... Les grains de beauté qui apparaissent et disparaissent, c'est vraiment pas fin comme détail. Vivement les régulations sur l'utilisation de l'IA en marketing, avant qu'on ne s'y perde complètement 😅

During a recent trip to Germany, I opened TikTok and encountered a Vodafone advertisement featuring a presenter who likely isn't real. Several clues point to her being an AI-generated creation: her hair moves unnaturally, moles appear and vanish, and her facial expressions carry an unsettling, uncanny valley quality. Vodafone confirmed my suspicions in the video's comment section.
When a viewer questioned why the company didn't use a real person, Vodafone responded—according to a machine translation of the German text—that it was "testing different advertising styles, this time with AI." In another comment, the company noted that "AI is now so integrated into daily life that we're exploring its use in advertising as well."
The ad certainly grabbed my attention, though primarily because my brain immediately detected something was not quite right.
This isn't Vodafone's first experiment with generative AI in marketing. Last year, the telecom released a commercial where every scene was AI-generated. Meanwhile, artificially crafted influencers are gaining traction. As reported by the New York Times, examples like Lil' Miquela—a digital persona developed by Dapper Labs—have already starred in campaigns for brands such as Calvin Klein, Prada, and BMW.
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Stripe has agreed to acquire OpenRouter, an AI model-routing platform that gives developers access to hundreds of models through a single interface. The deal adds model selection and routing to Stripe’s existing work around AI usage and token-based b
Google AI Overviews Gain Ground in Search Results
According to Similarweb’s 2026 Generative AI Landscape report, Google’s AI-generated summaries appeared in 43% of US searches, a significant rise from 15% recorded a year prior.While AI Overviews present generated summaries within standard search res
Sequoia-backed Empirik raises $21M to forecast outages before they strike
Before joining Sequoia Capital in 2020 as chief digital and information officer, Avon Puri spent over a decade running infrastructure at Rubrik and VMware. Three years ago, as large language models began showing their true potential, Puri, alongside
That AI influencer’s hair physics is giving me uncanny valley vibes. Vodafone really thought we wouldn’t notice the disappearing mole? 😂 Maybe they should’ve spent less on the algorithm and more on a real model.
Ça devient flippant de voir des publicités avec des avatars IA qui ressemblent presque à des vrais humains... Les grains de beauté qui apparaissent et disparaissent, c'est vraiment pas fin comme détail. Vivement les régulations sur l'utilisation de l'IA en marketing, avant qu'on ne s'y perde complètement 😅





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