Ask ten people who the first AI influencer was and at least half will say Lil Miquela. Fair enough, she's famous. She's also not AI-generated. Miquela is a CGI character, built and animated by a Los Angeles studio since 2016. Same goes for Kizuna AI, Imma, Shudu, Kyra and the rest of the 3D crowd. They're virtual influencers, and they paved the road, but nobody typed a prompt and got them back.

This piece is about the other kind. The faces made by generative image models like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, the ones that showed up when anyone with a decent graphics card could suddenly make a photorealistic woman who doesn't exist. The question is simple: who actually got there first, and what happened to them?

Our rule for this list is the same one we use everywhere else. A persona makes the cut only if her debut can be dated by someone other than her own team, and if real outlets covered her. Self-written bios, “born in” claims and chatbot answers don't count. If you're wondering why one loud name that calls herself the first isn't here, our fact-check explains it.

The summer everything changed

Before August 2022, making a convincing fake person took a 3D studio, a budget and months of work. Then Stable Diffusion went public on August 22, 2022, free and open, and anyone could run it. Midjourney's version 4 followed that November and made photorealism easy for people who'd never touched a render engine. DALL·E 2 opened to everyone in late September.

Within weeks, Instagram and TikTok started filling up with women who'd never been born. You'll never hear about most of them. A handful stuck, got noticed by the press, and made money. Those are the ones on this list.

The first generative AI influencers arrived within months of Stable Diffusion Tool releases, debuts and first big coverage, by month, 2022 to 2025
  1. Stable Diffusion releasedAug 2022
  2. Midjourney v4Nov 2022
  3. Milla Sofia’s account createdNov 2022
  4. Aitana López debutsJul 2023
  5. Futurism covers the trendJul 2023
  6. Emily Pellegrini debutsSep 2023
  7. First Miss AI crownedJul 2024
  8. Mia Zelu at WimbledonJul 2025

The gap between the tools and the first persona that stuck was about three months. After that, the press needed another eight to catch up.

The first wave, one by one

Milla Sofia, Finland: the one who got there first

Instagram’s own “About this account” panel shows her account was created in November 2022, three months after Stable Diffusion went public. Press reports in summer 2023 dated her first Instagram post and first TikTok to that same month. Her oldest surviving post is from March 2023, so the earliest ones appear to have been removed since.

The November 2022 date isn't her team's word for it, either. Excélsior, a Mexico City daily, printed it on August 1, 2023, two weeks after Futurism broke the AI influencer story, and outlets from Mexico to Brazil repeated it. Her creator's agent told MediaPost she was built mainly with Stable Diffusion and self-trained models, and that the plan was to develop her into a fashion model brands would take seriously.

She never hid what she was. Her bio called her a “robot girl” from Helsinki and an “AI creation” from the start, which didn't stop thousands of men from asking her to dinner anyway. By late 2023 she'd landed a campaign with the Finnish phone-accessories retailer Tyyliluuri, one of the first brand deals for a generative persona.

Where she is now: Milla has quietly turned into a music project. CreatorDB now describes her as an AI pop act with emotional, piano-driven releases, while the fashion lookbooks keep running alongside. Her Instagram, @millasofiafin, had about 686,000 followers on Social Blade on October 28, 2026. Her posts average about 18,000 likes, the strongest engagement of anyone on this list by a wide margin.

Aitana López, Spain: the one built as a business

Aitana was never a hobby. The Barcelona agency The Clueless, run by designers Rubén Cruz and Diana Núñez, built her in 2023 after getting fed up with human models who cancelled shoots or blew up budgets. Her Instagram account was created in June 2023, and she first posted in early July as a pink-haired, 25-year-old gamer and fitness fan. The agency still meets every week to plan what she'll “do” next.

She's also the one with the most on-the-record money. Her creators told Euronews she averages around €3,000 a month and has topped €10,000 in a good month, through brand campaigns and subscription content. Forbes put one month at almost $11,000. She's appeared on Times Square screens for the Spanish hair brand Llongueras, and The Clueless has since built a second model, Maia Lima.

Where she is now: still agency-run and still working brand deals. @fit_aitana had about 404,000 followers on Social Blade on October 28, 2026, averaging around 670 likes a post. She was also a judge for the first Miss AI in 2024, which tells you how fast the industry made her an elder.

Emily Pellegrini: the one who blew up and went quiet

Emily's first post went up in September 2023. Her anonymous creator later told the Daily Mail he'd asked ChatGPT what the average man's dream girl looked like and built her to match. Within weeks she was getting DMs from footballers, MMA fighters and businessmen who didn't realize she wasn't real.

The money came just as fast. Her creator said she made close to $10,000 in her first six weeks on Fanvue, and Fortune later reported, citing Fanvue, that she brought in $23,000 in January 2024 alone. He even spun off a blonde “sister,” Fiona Pellegrini.

Where she is now: in February 2024, according to the Czech outlet Novinky, her creator wiped most of her Instagram posts and resurfaced a few months later as a judge for Miss AI. On October 28, 2026, Social Blade showed @emilypellegrini at about 546,000 followers but only 165 posts, and CreatorDB noted in mid-2026 that she hadn't posted in months. Two days later, Instagram was showing her profile as unavailable. The audience had stayed; the output mostly hadn't.

Lexi Love, UK: the one we can't check

Lexi Love came from the UK startup Foxy AI, active since June 2023 and sold as a 24/7 “perfect girlfriend” who chats in 30 languages. In early 2024 the company told the press she was making around $30,000 a month from subscribers and getting marriage proposals every month.

That figure came from Foxy AI's own CEO, through a press agency, and we found nothing independent to back it up. We also couldn't find current follower or revenue numbers. She's on this list because she was part of the first wave and got real coverage. Treat the money the way you'd treat any company talking about its own product.

Kenza Layli, Morocco: the one with the crown

Kenza Layli won the first Miss AI in July 2024, beating around 1,500 entries in a contest run by Fanvue's World AI Creator Awards. She was created by Myriam Bessa of the Moroccan studio Phoenix AI and stood out among the finalists as a hijab-wearing North African persona, with a message about women's empowerment in the Arab world. CNN covered the win, at a time when she had close to 200,000 Instagram followers.

Where she is now: still active, and now part of a whole AI “family” with siblings Zina and Mehdi Layli. But the crown didn't turn into growth. CreatorDB put her at about 162,000 Instagram followers on October 6, 2026, lower than when she won.

Ana and Mia Zelu, Croatia: the second wave

The Zelu “sisters” aren't first-wave, but they show what the second wave looks like. Ana launched in January 2024 and Mia in March 2025, both run by a Croatian studio called Zeluhouse. Mia went viral in July 2025 with photos of herself at Wimbledon that fooled a lot of tennis fans, even though her bio says she's an AI influencer. Tennis.com, Khaleej Times and The Australian all ran the story.

Where she is now: CreatorDB had Mia at about 284,000 Instagram followers on September 26, 2026, slightly down month on month. Like Kenza, the viral moment brought a burst of followers, and the curve flattened after.

Granny Spills: the one who broke through

The second wave's biggest hit doesn't look like any of the women above. Granny Spills is an AI grandmother in all-pink designer suits who hands out blunt life advice (“Flowers die, honey. My Chanel bags are forever”), made with AI video tools by Eric Suerez and Adam Vaserstein of Blur Studios. TIME reported in November 2025 that she picked up about 400,000 TikTok followers and a million on Instagram in her first few weeks. On November 1, 2026, her Instagram showed about 2 million followers.

She's video rather than photos, and a character rather than a model nobody can tell from a real one, and she did in weeks what the first wave didn't manage in years.

Where they stand in late 2026

The first wave and the second, as of late 2026
PersonaDebutInstagram account createdFirst big coverageInstagram nowStatus
Milla SofiaNov 2022Nov 2022Futurism, Jul 2023~686K (Social Blade, Oct 28)Active, pivoted to AI pop music
Aitana LópezJul 2023Jun 2023Euronews and Business Insider, Nov 2023~404K (Social Blade, Oct 28)Active, agency brand work
Emily PellegriniSep 2023Profile unavailableInfobae and Daily Mail, Nov 2023 to Jan 2024~546K (Social Blade, Oct 28)Barely posting, profile unavailable since Oct 30
Lexi LoveJun 2023Not checkedPress agency stories, Jan 2024No current data foundCompany claims only
Kenza LayliBefore mid-2024Not checked yetMiss AI win, CNN, Jul 2024~162K (CreatorDB, Oct 6)Active, below her peak
Mia ZeluMar 2025Not checked yetWimbledon story, Jul 2025~284K (CreatorDB, Sep 26)Active, flat

A few things stand out when you line them up.

Nobody got huge. Four years into the generative era, the biggest first-wave persona has under 700,000 Instagram followers. That's a solid audience, and it's still a long way from the millions some accounts like to claim in their bios.

Being early was worth a headline, not a moat. Milla, Aitana and Emily each got a burst of global press in their first year. Kenza and Mia got theirs from a single moment, a crown and a tennis tournament. In every case where we could see the trend, growth slowed or reversed once the story moved on.

The money we can actually verify is modest. The best-documented figures, Aitana's €3,000 average month and Emily's $23,000 January, came from the agency or the platform on the record. The bigger numbers, like Lexi Love's $30,000 a month, came from the company selling the product.

What the ones still standing have in common

Look at who's still posting and the pattern is hard to miss.

There's a team behind each of them. Aitana has The Clueless, Kenza has Phoenix AI, the Zelus have Zeluhouse, and Milla has a creator and an agent. Emily, the clearest case of a one-person operation, is also the one that went quiet. Her creator told reporters early on how many hours a day she took to run, and nobody keeps that up forever.

They don't hide being AI. Milla, Kenza and the Zelus say so right in their bios, and the agencies behind Aitana talk about it openly in interviews. Being honest about it hasn't held any of them back.

They found a reason to exist beyond the photos. Milla turned into a music act. Aitana became a working brand ambassador. Kenza built a voice around Moroccan and Arab identity. A pretty face in a nice location was enough to go viral in 2023. It hasn't been enough to stick around since.

And their numbers have names attached. The figures in this piece came from agencies, platforms and trackers that anyone can check. That's the bar for being called first, or biggest, or most successful. Anyone can write “the first AI influencer” in a bio. The ones who actually were first never had to.

Sources

Instagram figures for Milla Sofia, Aitana López and Emily Pellegrini come from Social Blade (@millasofiafin, @fit_aitana, @emilypellegrini), checked on October 28, 2026. Kenza Layli's and Mia Zelu's come from CreatorDB on the dates shown, and Granny Spills' from her Instagram profile on November 1, 2026. Account creation dates come from Instagram's “About this account” panel, which is shown to logged-in users. All of them change daily.

Share this article

Anthony Alexander

Editor-in-Chief of Cybeauty One, an independent publication about virtual and AI influencers, running since March 2024. Corrections and tips: [email protected].