Thousands of AI-generated “personalities” are competing in a new global awards program that organizers are billing as the largest competition of its kind.
The “AI Personality of the Year Awards”, co-hosted by AI creation platform OpenArt and creator subscription platform Fanvue, invited participants to create, publish and develop virtual characters in several categories, including entertainment, lifestyle, humor, fitness, as well as anime, cartoon and cartoon characters. fantasy.
The competition took place over several weeks and contestants were required to publish at least four posts during the challenge period. The winners will be announced this month, according to OpenArt.
“We had an incredible response, with around 3,300 applications in total,†Chloe Fang, head of partnerships at OpenArt, told Euronews Next. She added that the rewards would exceed $90,000 (around €76,000) in prizes and gifts.
Organizers describe it as the largest competition specifically dedicated to AI-generated personalities, a field they say is becoming increasingly democratized.
Over the past 18 months, AI-generated personalities have established themselves in popular culture, uniting loyal fan communities and landing major brand deals, according to organizers.
While the winners have not yet been revealed, one of the most followed candidates in the competition, according to information provided by the organizers, is Jae Young Joon, an AI-generated Korean male model character with over 400,000 followers. followers on Instagram and TikTok.
Jae’s profile clearly states that it is AI-generated but, according to organizers, fans continue to send him touching messages and love letters.
The account is managed by Luc Thierry, a Canadian creator. The conclusion he draws, according to the organizers, is that the public cares less about whether a persona is real than about the sincerity of the emotional connection felt.
Related
Controversy surrounding AI-generated images of humans
This increasingly blurred boundary between reality and fiction is also what makes virtual personalities ethically problematic.
Generative AI is already raising concerns about job security, copyright compliance and pornography linked to deepfakes.
In January, Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot Grok came under fire after users repeatedly generated sexually explicit images of women and minors. This pushed X to restrict some of Grok’s image-generating features and reinforced broader concerns about how quickly AI tools can be used to create intimate images without consent.
At the same time, critics believe that the generation of images by AI risks further accentuating the promotion of unrealistic bodies, a fault that has already been criticized for years on social networks. The “perfect” influencer no longer needs lighting, good genetics, cosmetic surgery, filters or even a physical body.
Research suggests that even neutral queries can produce highly biased results. A 2026 study by the University of Toronto, Canada, showed that AI image generators disproportionately produced people who were young, white and, in the case of women, thin, with symmetrical features and blemish-free skin.
These criticisms aren’t entirely new to Fanvue. Last year, the platform co-hosted what it billed as the world’s first beauty pageant for AI-generated women, Miss AI, which sparked questions that these synthetic contestants risk reinforcing narrow beauty standards and unrealistic rather than diversifying them.
Related
Fang says, however, that awards are not judged primarily on appearance, but on quality, inspiration, brand appeal and fan engagement.
According to her, the first virtual influencers were often associated with “pretty girls on Instagram”, but applications now include music-related personas, entertainment characters, fantasy figures, AI-generated male personas as well as creators working around LGBTQ+ themes and cultural representation.
She adds that OpenArt and Fanvue have put safeguards in place. On the platform side, OpenArt uses tools to spot potential copyright risks and harmful content, and entries are reviewed by humans on the contest organization’s side.
“Our rules prohibit hate speech, harassment and sexually explicit content,” says Fang.
OpenArt also indicates that participants come from very diverse backgrounds, which organizers say reflects the variety of points of view that invest the field. According to OpenArt, 37% of creators come from Europe and the United Kingdom, around 30% from North America, 18% from Asia, 5% from Latin America, 4% from Africa and 4% from the Middle East.
However, these figures concern the human creators behind the applications. The organizers did not provide Euronews Next with demographic data on the AI-generated personas themselves.
This text was translated with the help of artificial intelligence. Report a problem: [feedback-articles-fr@euronews.com].
