Today, customers are increasingly likely to encounter AI influence while participating in online communities and social platforms.
When a synthetic account appears to share lived experience or independently endorse a product, it risks weakening the trust customers place in online communities.
For CX leaders, the priority is to use AI to support real conversations and make its role clear wherever it shapes CX.
In conversation with CX Today, Sarah Stephenson, Social Director at tmp, warned that AI-driven social activity can undermine trust when it mimics genuine customer advocacy.
“The concern starts when AI begins borrowing the visual and behavioural signals we associate with influencers/content creators to create the impression of independent advocacy,” she argued.
“When in reality, it’s not an independent advocacy and the opinions aren’t real/truthful.”
The New Social Proof Problem
Despite common misconceptions that the current landscape of AI influencers mainly involves virtual or fictional celebrities, online communities are now seeing the rise of synthetic personas designed to appear as ordinary customers or community members.
For example, an AI-operated account could create a genuine customer impression by praising a product, respond to recommendations, or participate in a Reddit-style discussion as though it was an independent voice.
“Across social channels, the boundaries between different kinds of influence are already blurred, and they have been for some time,” Stephenson warns.
The continuous enhancement of AI makes this distinction even harder to spot when synthetic participation is designed to resemble organic conversation.
In fact, tmp’s Cost of Chaos report noted that 94% of buyers agree that AI tools are influencing their decisions, with 44% describing those influences as major.
Therefore, as AI becomes more embedded in these online environments, customers will be required to understand the source and nature of the influence they encounter.
However, “people don’t need a technical explanation of every algorithm or LLM involved, but they should have enough information to understand whether they’re seeing an independent opinion, sponsored content, brand-created content or something generated or operated by AI,” she explained.
Whilst AI influencers, when properly disclosed, don’t always represent a problem, the risk may begin when said disclosure is insufficient and its presence creates the appearance of genuine experience or independent advocacy.
Stephenson emphasized this issue:
“Those aren’t simply new advertising formats; they’re just manufactured peer influence.”
What is The Right Role for Automation?
Whilst a first instinct may be to remove synthetic participation from online communities, its existence amongst all platforms means that customer trust will be strained regardless of whether a particular company uses it or not.
Instead, brands should input boundaries so they can use them to add value without replacing genuine human interactions, helping human teams identify questions, surface discussions, and spot recurring customer concerns.
This takes the operational burden away from relevant teams to ensure marketers and community leaders are focused on complex human-related queries and tasks.
“Brands should think of AI as infrastructure/the back-end support for social communities rather than a substitute for the people and conversations within them,” Stephenson said.
“You could simplify this down to three principals: disclose, distinguish, but don’t fabricate.”
Meaningful AI involvement should be disclosed along with prohibited practices that create the appearance of genuine demand, as AI governance within online spaces should now be treated as a core part of its management.
Human accountability also needs to remain clear when conversations involve sensitive customer concerns, as while AI can help identify and route these interactions, responsibility for the resulting experience should remain with human teams.
Stephenson concludes:
“The thing that makes these communities and social platforms socially valuable, and the reason why users will want to return, is the belief that there are real people, experiences, and opinions behind the conversation.”
As AI influencers become an increasingly normal part of social engagement, brands should avoid confusing a scalable synthetic presence with a genuine community, as its strongest role may be helping users find answers, connect with others, and have better conversations.
