According to alleged posts from Chan, as of last August, the company released \u201c2,500 organic videos every week for businesses, achieving billions of views every month.\u201d Virelox reportedly had more than 106 YouTube accounts by April of this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now everyone is talking about ghost creators, but most people are still fuzzy on what they actually are. Let\u2019s get into it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A ghost creator is a creator hired by brands to produce content that often follows hyper-specific briefs, usually under a pseudonym or anonymous persona that doesn\u2019t map back to their real identity. In some cases, like the one described by Semafor<\/em>, ghost creators are actors or dedicated (but small) creators who go by a fake name. Virelox reportedly posted a casting call on Backstage<\/a> in July looking for \u201ca reliable and professional on-camera spokesperson for a news-related YouTube channel,\u201d signaling how political or newsy these ghost fronts can appear to viewers.<\/p>\n Not all ghost creators are actors; some know how to make decent content, but have a smaller audience. Julian Ivaldy is an app builder behind THE QUEST, a project funding company that runs a farm of 60 TikTok accounts pushing short-form content. He told Digiday he considers a ghost creator to be a \u201ccontent operator\u201d that \u201cproduce[s] and distribute[s] social media content through dedicated accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re paying for their ability to create content and reach people, rather than for an existing audience,\u201d he said<\/p>\n Yes and no. In some cases, ghost creators don\u2019t show their face at all and instead make slideshows or animated content, particularly on TikTok. Sometimes they use a pseudonym, either because they\u2019re actors or just to protect their identities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGhost\u201d describes the arrangement, not whether you see a face,\u201d said Ivaldy.\u00a0<\/p>\n But ghost creators aren\u2019t the same as wholly AI-generated creators, because they\u2019re a real person creating UGC, albeit occasionally aided by LLMs or other AI tools<\/p>\n Instead, think of ghost creators as a way for brands to get UGC that feels authentic and won\u2019t set off alarm bells for the AI skeptics.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from the companies mentioned in this piece, brands might tap ghost creators for cost effective content that hews exactly to their script and can be spun up fast.\u00a0<\/p>\n They\u2019re not creators, per se, but executors \u2013 hired to hit a brief, not build a personal brand.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re pretty replaceable,\u201d said Jeremy Carrasco, director at Riddance, a media intelligence platform and AI literacy publication. \u201cYou can spin up a bunch, and hope that one hits, and if it hits, you did your job, and you might kill the campaign once it\u2019s done.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Ivaldy implied marketers have been using ghost creators for years, suggesting the practice is \u201cmore familiar than the term\u201d and people may call it \u201ca creator program or an ambassador program.\u201d He claims him and his peers \u201cintroduced the concept\u201d after years of growing mobile apps with no \u201cproper term to define the strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrasco believes marketing has been using these tactics for quite some time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs an AI-native, TikTok-native person, I\u2019m just looking at [ghost creators] and saying \u2018That\u2019s just how companies advertise now,\u2019\u201d he said<\/p>\n Joseph Perello, founder and CEO of Props Media Platform, explained why they may be enticing<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing brands question what I\u2019d call the followers fallacy: the assumption that a creator\u2019s value is primarily the size of the audience they bring with them. A creator can be highly credible and persuasive without having millions of followers. Those are two different assets \u2013 credibility and distribution \u2013 and brands no longer need to buy them as a bundle,\u201d he said. \u201cBrands can select creators for their expertise, perspective and ability to tell a credible story, then use paid media to distribute that work to precisely the audience they want to reach.\u201d<\/p>\n Naturally, the big difference here is volume and repetition \u2013 if brands are pushing out the same content written with the help of LLMs through an army of \u201cfake\u201d creators, that\u2019s far closer to a ghost creator than an ambassador.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ivaldy\u2019s Medium blog post about ghost creators details where brands can find them (including TikTok and Instagram accounts with \u201cwinning\u201d posts, college campuses and UGC marketplaces)<\/p>\n Obviously, when dealing with politics and misinformation, an army of ghost creators spreading the same speech across hundreds of thousands of views is very bad<\/p>\n When it comes to marketing or a brand\u2019s reputation, Carrasco said the problem<\/a> with ghost creators churning out near-identical content is authenticity<\/p>\n \u201cHiring people and giving them fake names\u2026that\u2019s inauthentic content by definition,\u201d he said about Chan\u2019s alleged ghost creator army.\u00a0<\/p>\n For brands, ghost creators are a way to buy scale and control: UGC that looks authentic, at a fraction of the cost of marquee influencers (Ivaldy called them \u201ccost effective\u201d). For everyone else, they make already-murky social feeds even harder to read.\u00a0<\/p>\n Plus, when political or issue content is fronted by ghost creators reading LLM scripts, it blurs the line between what\u2019s real grassroots sentiment and what\u2019s manufactured.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Carrasco, ghost creators are a way for brands to route around platforms\u2019 crackdowns on AI-generated content.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re reverse-centauring AI-generated content\u2026which is when a human carries out an AI automation<\/a> because they\u2019re effectively doing the last mile,\u201d Carrasco said. \u201cThere are a lot of creators who are using AI to automate entire parts of their workflows, and there\u2019s a lot of backlash about that. The difference is that when that happens, you know who to hold accountable. Your audience can react.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrasco pointed to AI-generated wellness influencers clearly labeled as AI in ads as a transparent way to use AI for scaled content in the creator space.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that people assume that everything they come across on social media is completely real, but they do assume that they should be able to figure out if there\u2019s a fake character being invented here to push a certain narrative. That\u2019s a different thing,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perello made a clear delineation<\/p>\n \u201cWhere I\u2019d draw the line with \u2018ghost creators\u2019 is identity,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you make the creator completely interchangeable or anonymous, you risk removing the very thing that makes creator media powerful: a real person putting their identity and reputation behind what they say.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear if every platform is aware of this kind of content. TikTok and YouTube didn\u2019t respond to Digiday in time for this article\u2019s publication. YouTube removed several AI-generated\/-assisted political channels in August, after a different Semafor<\/em> article about AI creators went live. Any account that runs afoul of a platform\u2019s terms of service runs the risk of being shut down, and if the platform has explicit rules regarding AI use, spinning up fake creators reading LLM scripts for videos that can get hundreds of thousands of views will likely draw attention.<\/p>\n But what about creators hired solely to churn out hyperspecific UGC for brands? Should platforms flag these \u201cfake\u201d creators at all, or is this just a remix of an old tactic: does it even matter?<\/p>\n View More September 9, 2026<\/p>\n With the launch of myriad retail media networks, these new divisions of various consumer-facing companies are now fighting for ad dollars<\/p>\n The Creator Economy<\/p>\n September 8, 2026<\/p>\n A look at the creator economy trends heading in to Q4 2026, from clipping to creators in the C-suite, diversification and regulation<\/p>\n Google<\/a> on Trial<\/p>\n September 7, 2026<\/p>\n Publishers didn\u2019t get a Google AdX breakup; they got behavioral remedies, promised transparency and a new reminder that Google\u2019s real power lies in controlling demand, not pipes<\/p>\n \n Related:<\/strong> \n Join Justfine Infotech<\/strong> and build real digital skills in AI, automation, web development, digital marketing, office productivity, e-commerce, freelancing and cybersecurity.<\/p>\n Available Programmes:<\/strong> WhatsApp:<\/strong>More in Media<\/h3>\n
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