Fady Ramzy: How AI Is Making Fake Influencers Harder to Spot in Online Marketing

Featured on: Sky News Arabia I Format: TV Interview I Date: September 2023
Topic: Fake Influencer and Fake Followers: A New Equation for Marketing I Language: Arabic I Listen to the original interview: Sky News Arabia Interview

 

There was a time when identifying an influencer seemed relatively simple. You looked at the number of followers, the engagement on their posts, the brands they worked with, and the content they published. Today, that process is becoming much more complicated.

In my September 2023 interview with Sky News Arabia, I discussed a challenge that I believe is becoming increasingly important for brands and marketers: how do you distinguish between a real influencer with a genuine audience and a fake influencer whose followers and engagement may be artificially created?

The conversation around fake influencers and online marketing is not simply about fake accounts. It is about how quickly the influencer marketing industry has grown, how artificial intelligence is changing the ability to create artificial followers and engagement, and how difficult it has become to tell the difference between authentic influence and manufactured activity.

For brands investing in influencer marketing, this distinction matters.

Why Fake Influencers and Online Marketing Are Becoming Harder to Separate

When I spoke about fake influencers and online marketing, I started with what I see as the first major reason the challenge has become more difficult: the enormous growth of influencer marketing itself.

The influencer marketing industry is currently estimated at around $32 billion. It grew significantly during COVID and the lockdowns, when people were spending more time at home.

At the same time, we saw the emergence of what became known as the Creator Economy.

The smartphone made content creation much more accessible. It became easier for almost anyone to become a content creator. If that creator focused on a particular direction or niche, they could become what we call a Micro Influencer.

Before COVID, the more prominent phenomenon was the Macro Influencer: influencers with 100,000 followers or more, with some reaching millions of followers.

Today, the direction has increasingly moved toward Micro Influencers and even smaller influencers.

That creates opportunity, but it also creates complexity. When it becomes easier for more people to become influencers and participate in a market worth billions of dollars, distinguishing genuine influence from artificial influence becomes more challenging.

This is where the conversation about fake influencers and online marketing begins.

I have discussed the wider business side of creators in my analysis of the content creation economy, where I looked at why content creation has become an actual industry rather than simply a hobby. The same shift is important here: once content creation becomes an industry, brands need to think carefully about who they are actually partnering with.

The Three Factors Making Fake Influencers Harder to Identify

From my perspective, three developments have made the distinction between real and fake influencers much more difficult.

1. The growth of influencer marketing

The first is the growth of the influencer marketing industry itself.

As the market expanded and the Creator Economy developed, it became much easier for individuals to enter the space. The move from the dominance of Macro Influencers toward Micro Influencers and smaller creators means that brands are now dealing with a much wider range of accounts.

That makes the process of evaluating influence more important.

2. The rise of artificial intelligence

The second factor is artificial intelligence and the development of the technology, particularly since November of the previous year at the time of the interview.

AI has made it much easier to create fake followers.

Fake followers are generally bots or accounts that are not real. What has changed is how easily these accounts can now be created.

But the problem goes beyond follower numbers.

It is no longer only about the number of likes under a post. AI can also generate numerous comments that correspond to the content published by an influencer.

This makes fake influencers and online marketing a much more difficult problem because artificial activity can look increasingly similar to genuine engagement.

An influencer can have accounts following them that appear to interact with their content, and those accounts can even appear to have a high level of quality in their engagement.

As a result, the challenge is no longer simply asking, “How many followers does this influencer have?”

The more important question is whether those followers and that engagement are real.

3. Artificial engagement

The third element is the growing difficulty of distinguishing genuine engagement from manufactured engagement.

When artificial accounts can be created and AI can generate comments that fit the post, fake influencers and online marketing become increasingly difficult to evaluate using surface-level numbers alone.

The result is a market where a real influencer with real followers can exist alongside an influencer whose audience and engagement are artificially created.

For brands, that difference can be significant.

Fake followers are always bots or accounts that are not real, and it has now become easier to create these fake followers.

Fady Ramzy, Sky News Arabia, September 2023

A Practical Framework for Evaluating an Influencer

I do not believe there is one number that can tell a brand whether an influencer is genuine. What I discussed in the interview was the importance of looking at several elements together.

Start with the account

The first step is to follow the influencer’s account and examine it carefully.

Look at the brands they have previously worked with.

Have they worked with recognizable brands, or do they mainly promote unknown brands and products?

This does not automatically tell you everything about the influencer, but it provides an important part of the picture.

Examine content quality

The next question is the quality of the content they consistently produce.

Is the content genuine? Is it artificially produced using AI?

At first, identifying this may be difficult. But following the account carefully can help you understand the quality and consistency of the content.

Examine engagement

Do not stop at likes.

The development of AI means that comments can also be generated to match the content of a post. Therefore, when considering fake influencers and online marketing, engagement needs to be examined rather than simply counted.

The quality of the interaction matters.

Combine human judgment with tools

I also pointed to the role of specialized software and analytical tools.

The process is not necessarily about choosing between human judgment and technology. It can involve the influencer being examined by a person, together with software and specialized tools that support the analysis.

That combination becomes particularly important when dealing with fake influencers and online marketing because artificial activity can increasingly resemble genuine activity.

How Do You Measure the Impact of an Influencer Campaign?

Another important point from my interview is that evaluating an influencer should ultimately connect to the objective of the campaign.

Every campaign has KPIs, but those KPIs can be different depending on what the brand wants to achieve.

If the goal is simply reach and increasing the size of the audience, then Reach can be one of the relevant KPIs.

If the objective is improving reputation, Sentiment Analysis can be used to understand whether people are talking about the brand positively or negatively on social media.

Then there is the most obvious commercial outcome: sales.

Sales can be tracked through visits to the brand’s website, a landing page, or another page where people can make an online purchase.

This is an important part of the fake influencers and online marketing conversation because follower numbers are not necessarily the final measure of campaign success.

The question should always come back to what the campaign was designed to achieve and whether the influencer helped the brand reach those specific KPIs.

I explored the economics behind this broader creator landscape in my discussion of how social media influencers make money. The commercial side of influence cannot be separated from the question of trust and measurement.

The Bigger Role of AI in Marketing

There is another side of this story that I emphasized during the interview.

I do not see AI only as a challenge.

The opportunities it creates for marketing and content creation are enormous. As I said during the conversation,  the sky is no longer the limit.

One of the most important opportunities is content creation.

AI can create different forms of content at a high level of quality, allowing marketers to produce high-quality content with less effort.

AI can also help with search engine optimization. It can improve the quality of websites and help with their ranking on Google, which can lead to increased traffic or sales.

Another opportunity is translation.

If a campaign or product is created in one language, AI can make it easier to produce high-quality translated content for a website or social media.

AI can therefore save time and effort across content creation, translation, content review, and SEO optimization while supporting the production of high-quality content and products.

This creates an interesting contrast in the fake influencers and online marketing discussion: the same technological development that can make artificial followers and engagement easier can also create significant opportunities for legitimate marketers and content creators.

The important issue is understanding how the technology is being used.

Once I understand the customer more deeply, the next question is whether my business is actually offering the right solution. This is where I use AI not just for analysis, but as a tool for challenging and refining my own thinking. I explore this approach in more detail in my guide on how to use AI for business growth, where I walk through practical ways to use AI for everything from building an Ideal Customer Profile to strengthening an existing business offering.

From Influencer Marketing to the Wider Influence Economy

This is also why I see a connection between influencer marketing and the broader question of influence.

In another analysis on my website, I examined how corporate influence works when advertising doesn’t. The subject is different, but the underlying question is related: how do we understand influence when traditional advertising and obvious promotional messages are no longer the only ways to shape attention and decisions?

Influencer marketing sits within that larger transformation.

Brands are no longer looking only at conventional advertising. They are also looking at people, communities, content, and audiences.

That makes credibility increasingly important.

And when artificial followers and artificial engagement enter the picture, fake influencers and online marketing become an issue that brands cannot simply ignore.

Why This Conversation Still Matters

The interview took place in September 2023, but the underlying question remains straightforward: how can brands know whether the influence they are paying for is real?

The answer cannot be based only on the number of followers.

It requires looking at the account, previous brand relationships, content quality, engagement, and the tools available to support analysis.

It also requires understanding what the campaign is actually trying to accomplish.

This is particularly important as the Creator Economy continues to make it easier for people to become content creators and as AI continues to change what can be produced digitally.

The challenge with fake influencers and online marketing is therefore not simply identifying fake accounts. It is understanding the difference between numbers and genuine influence.

And that distinction matters because a large audience on paper is not necessarily the same thing as a real audience.

Key Takeaways From My Sky News Arabia Interview

My conversation with Sky News Arabia came down to several practical points:

• The influencer marketing industry has grown substantially, reaching an estimated $32 billion.
• The Creator Economy has made it easier for people to become content creators and influencers.
• The market has shifted from a stronger focus on Macro Influencers toward Micro Influencers and smaller influencers.
• Artificial intelligence has made it easier to create fake followers.
• AI can also generate comments that correspond to an influencer’s content.
• Follower counts and likes alone are no longer enough to understand whether influence is genuine.
• Brands need to examine the influencer’s account, previous brand relationships, content quality, and engagement.
• Campaign performance should be evaluated through specific KPIs based on the campaign objective.

Together, these points explain why fake influencers and online marketing require more careful analysis than simply looking at follower counts.

Work With Fady Ramzy

If your brand is navigating influencer marketing, digital marketing, content creation, or the changing role of AI, I can help you look beyond surface-level numbers and understand the strategic picture.

The digital environment is changing quickly. The challenge is not simply keeping up with new platforms or technologies. It is knowing how to evaluate influence, understand audiences, measure results, and make better marketing decisions.

That is where strategic thinking matters.

 

FAQ

What are fake influencers and online marketing?

Fake influencers and online marketing refers here to the challenge of distinguishing genuine influencers and real audience engagement from artificially created followers and interactions.

Why are fake influencers becoming harder to identify?

The growth of influencer marketing, the expansion of the Creator Economy, and the development of AI have made it easier to create fake followers and generate comments that correspond to an influencer’s content.

Are follower numbers enough to evaluate an influencer?

No. Brands should also examine the influencer’s account, previous brands, content quality, and engagement, while using specialized software and analytical tools where appropriate.

How can brands measure influencer campaign performance?

Campaigns should have specific KPIs based on their objectives. These can include Reach, Sentiment Analysis, website or landing-page visits, and sales.

Does AI only create challenges for marketing?

No. AI also creates significant opportunities in content creation, translation, content review, and SEO optimization, helping marketers produce high-quality content with less effort.