LoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyClarissa Mansbridge spent nearly two decades building an entertainment career behind the scenes, working with the likes of Jason DeRulo and Shengo Deane, Kim Kardashian’s former bodyguard, but she rarely appeared at public events. She liked the thrill of it: building someone’s brand, swerving crises, and dealing with day-to-day challenges.
Then, three years ago, her life was upended when her son was born without a heartbeat at 33 weeks. Doctors managed to resuscitate him, but the months in intensive care brought scare after scare, with no certainty that he would survive.
When, eventually, miraculously, they made it home, Mansbridge, who lives in Brisbane, Australia, knew her work life would have to change due to complications related to her son’s recovery. She began experimenting with AI image-generation tools and built the “humbly wealthy, wholesome” influencer and model Mia Metaverse. A fan of early Sims, she reveled in crafting storylines and glamorous settings for Mia to move through.
Mansbridge, 34, says she now earns around $6,000 a month through brand collaborations and designing bespoke AI influencers for brands, many of which require her to sign an NDA so she can’t disclose which ones she’s worked for. Yet despite this being her most profitable year since launching, Mansbridge and other AI creators worry that global changes to how AI content is handled on social platforms could upend their business model.
Since the emergence of generative AI and text-to-image tools in 2022, creators have built lucrative accounts around virtual personalities that are more affordable, scalable, and brand-safe. Estimated to be worth $14.5 billion, the virtual influencer market is projected to reach $110.4 billion by 2033, with a reported 33.6 percent annual growth rate. Brands are firmly on board: Research by the social agency Billion Dollar Boy found that 79 percent of marketers are increasing their investment in AI-generated creator content.
But as regulation converges on this burgeoning creator industry, the tide may be turning. From August 2, new rules under the EU Artificial Intelligence Act require AI-generated or -manipulated promotional content to be clearly labeled, while platforms like TikTok are tightening detection systems and reshaping feeds to elevate human creators over synthetic spam. For people whose livelihoods depend on AI influence, the risk is a regulatory maze, with no clear road map to navigate it.
The EU AI Act is the first-ever comprehensive legal framework on AI—a “global first,” as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen called it—and aims to foster “trustworthy AI” in Europe. Under Article 50 of the act, providers and deployers of AI systems must disclose when audio, image, video, or text content has been artificially generated or manipulated. But “where the content forms part of an evidently artistic, creative, satirical, fictional, or analogous work,” the transparency obligations are limited to disclosure that doesn’t hamper the display or enjoyment of the work. That leaves plenty of room for interpretation—and confusion.
Kai Zenner, digital policy adviser to Axel Voss, a member of Parliament and a negotiator on the Act, says it was drafted too early, too abstractly. “ChatGPT had only just come out, and there was scant knowledge among MEPs and parliamentarians about what we were regulating for,” he explains. “The driver was simply: AI is here and more AI-generated content is coming, so let’s raise the AI literacy of EU citizens [by implementing the labeling clause].”
More legislation is likely to add to the uncertainty. “There are several revisions coming later this year and next that will force influencers not only to label their content, but provide transparency on where they come from, what they want to do, and how they are financed,” explains Zenner. “It’s still really unclear how that will be managed, since all we have to go on is Article 50.”
Zenner worries that AI creators could be pulled into a tangle of overlapping rules: the AI Act, copyright law, audiovisual media rules, consumer protection law, and possibly even the Digital Fairness Act, the EU's proposed update to consumer protection rules for the digital age, which targets online tactics that exploit or mislead users. “People running these accounts could find one law says their content is lawful, while another law says it's unlawful,” he says.
With 60 percent of creators admitting in 2025 that their AI-assisted content had broken industry rules because of mislabeling, the risk of missteps is only set to grow in 2026. Many major social media platforms have introduced crackdowns of their own. In mid-July, TikTok announced a detection system to catch AI spam, which it claims is “crowding out original creators.” It already requires creators to label AI-generated content and lets users reduce the amount of AI content in their feeds. Pinterest takes a similar approach, while Meta now adds an “AI info” label across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads when it detects AI-generated content.
“The same platforms that produced more content, faster, and at a lower cost, are now tweaking their algorithms to push that content back down, but none of these systems are precise enough,” explains Matt Navarra, social media consultant and author of the weekly Geekout Newsletter. “The platforms are swinging at AI content with a sledgehammer when what they need is a scalpel.” He believes human creators will get caught out, even if they used AI for minor reasons, like fixing up their grammar.
Others are already seeing the cost of being too visible to algorithms. Lionel Metge, a hip-hop artist and producer who created a reggaeton/Afrobeat AI artist named Zairo at the start of this year, has already felt the shift in how platforms handle synthetic content. He’s noticed that the new detection systems can identify AI-generated content as soon as it’s published, especially when an account labels itself as a digital creation.
Metge, based in Lyon, accepts that the rules could already be alienating Zairo’s 23,800-follower account and some of its target audience, but he believes they’re necessary to avoid misleading the public, especially as generation models become ever more realistic. “I hope in future that algorithms won’t overly restrict the reach of AI-generated content,” he tells WIRED, adding that he plans to double down on “quality and overall coherence” to keep Zairo standing out.
It’s a moot point for experts operating in the creator industry. Fanvue, a platform where creators connect with fans and monetize their content, has been working with creators on disclosure standards ahead of the August deadline. “We’re seeing creators lean into transparency as a differentiator, with some building unique content that’s only possible for an AI persona, rather than trying to conceal it,” says Rob Haywood, Fanvue’s head of safety. He believes in-platform regulation is a response to a real problem: TikTok is responding to “a tide of low-effort synthetic content flooding feeds and reducing the visibility of real creatives.” Zenner advises creators to get ahead of future legislation by showing “their best efforts,” which could help if enforcement becomes tougher or less clear.
Mansbridge is building beyond a single character, towards a portfolio of AI personas that she hopes can be cross-promoted and eventually, run autonomously. “I want to create a legacy for my son, so that if ever he needs anything, it’s financially covered,” she explains. Her approach isn’t to hide the AI, but to make it safer to sell. She built Mia Metaverse to be “relatable, but aspirational,” a clean slate with no scandals, politics, or morals clauses. In a market facing tougher transparency rules, that kind of predictability could become an asset: The more platforms and regulators demand disclosure, the more valuable fully controlled AI personas may become.
Not all AI creators see the coming clampdown as a threat. Wim Tilkin, the Belgian animator behind an AI-generated character known as PuppyBerry Mousy, takes a more measured view. He supports “clear and well-balanced regulation,” especially around copyright, but worries Europe’s tougher approach could slow innovation and deepen its dependence on the US and China. His project began when he realized he could become a one-man studio. “By hand, I created a five-second clip of this super cute fluffy mouse in a scarf eating a piece of cheese, fed it into AI, and put music to it,” says Tilkin. “It got three million views so I thought: OK, I have a hook.”
Just under two years after that first video, PuppyBerry Mousy has 236,000 followers on Instagram and 683,000 followers on Facebook. Posting clips of the mouse dancing, singing, and sharing encouraging mantras, Tilkin says growth has been strongest in the last five months, with most of the audiences in the US and UK, especially women over 50. He says he receives messages from people who are lonely or sick, telling him they found comfort in Mousy’s dancing or in something the character said. “Mousy is all about softness and coziness in a hectic world,” he explains. “I’m glad that combination is bringing people joy.”
Having lived through the transition from 2D to 3D animation, 60-year-old Tilkin sees the current moment as just another technological shift. “AI will follow a similar path,” he says. “As artists, we have more tools and possibilities to suit our creative voice than ever before, but more choices to make.” For him the question is whether regulation can protect, not flatten, the kind of storytelling and emotional connection that drew audiences to Mousy in the first place.
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