Google is keeping its eye on the potential LLM bubble burst. But despite that, it–like pretty much every other major tech company–continues pouring cash into generative AI, rolling out new tools for users, marketers, and creators in hopes of achieving eventual profit.
While there’s been plenty of kickback against previous Google tools, like the AI overviews for both Search results and YouTube videos, and praise for other tools like chatbot Gemini, this latest tool might end up being one of its most divisive.
Last week, an update on the Google Support forum revealed that over the last few months, staffers have been working on Portraits, an “experimental feature” it said “lets viewers conversationally interact with AI representations of participating creators and gives these creators insights into topics that their audiences are interested in.”
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Google was careful to say the creators whose Portraits will become available to fans had “specifically chosen to participate,” and had allowed Google to use their content and other sources to design their AI selves.
This isn’t a novel idea. Back in 2023, Amouranth partnered with a company called Forever Voices AI to launch her own AI chatbot with extra parasocial flavor. The bot was advertised to fans as “unparalleled personal access to an AI copy of Amouranth herself, whenever and wherever they desire,” in an experience that “blurs the lines between reality and virtual interaction.”
She was perhaps the most well-known creator to do this with an independent company, but wasn’t alone. Snapchatter Caryn Marjorie, for example, released her own AI bot, and quickly experienced how wrong things could go: Following the bot’s premiere, she received death threats, and there were reportedly issues where CarynAI was sending sexually suggestive messages despite not being programmed to generate NSFW content.
These bots didn’t become permanent installations. CarynAI was shut down in 2024, and Amouranth’s chatbot abruptly went dark in November 2023, after Forever Voices AI’s founder/CEO was arrested for alleged attempted arson.
It also wasn’t only independent companies trying to make this work. Meta, scrambling for the next bandwagon after its womp-womp metaverse pivot, got into the game too.
Shortly after Amouranth’s bot and CarynAI debuted, Meta announced it was going to release its own chattable creator (and traditional celebrity) AIs. It notably nabbed MrBeast for a deal where his appearance was used for a bot named “Zach,” which Meta described as a too-cool-for-you older brother figure that dished out sick burns and always had a fresh joke on the tip of its tongue. (Danny Gonzalez made a video about interacting with “Zach,” and found the bot didn’t deliver on its promises. In fact, it outright refused to roast him because it just wanted everyone to have a good time. Also it told a lot of jokes about bicycles, for some reason.)
Meta axed all the bots less than a year later, citing low user engagement. To date, we haven’t seen creator avatars launch with any sort of staying power.
And similar fabricated creator interaction services haven’t fared well either. AsqMe, a company founded in 2023, partnered with creators to make their own “personal conversational AI” that would answer fan questions via text, written to mimic the creator’s unique voice.
It shut down earlier this month after plans to find “a strategic buyer to acquire its platform, AI technology, and two issued patents” fell through, it said in a statement.
“AsqMe made the process effortless with features such as First Draft which uses AI to respond to audience questions based on the creator’s own content. And Question Intercept which pulls questions from the creator’s comments and posts replies back with affiliate links,” the company added.
AsqMe didn’t say how many users it had, just claimed that “[b]y all traditional measures AsqMe was winning.” But the AI Q&A tools it offered weren’t enough to tempt an acquisition.
Now the question is if Google’s AI bots, which have a direct failed predecessor in Meta’s attempt and will offer Q&A interactions, will have any differentiating factor that’ll manage to provide fans with something they actually want.
As eMarketer recently reported, more than half of U.S. adults are unlikely to interact with AI-generated influencers. Gen X and Baby Boomers are more leery of bots (63% said they wouldn’t interact) but skepticism is strong amongst Gen Z and Millennials too (51%).
On top of that, 32% of consumers think gen AI had a negatively disrupting effect on the creator economy in 2025, per Billion Dollar Boy. That’s a jump from 2023, when 18% of consumers felt similarly.
Appealing to parasocial appetites might give YouTube a bump in the short term, but it’s human creators who have carried the platform from its earliest days to two full decades of being the single biggest video destination on the internet. Human creators keep billions of users watching–and thus generating ad revenue for Google.
Spending months figuring out a way to make fake copies of those real influencers is certainly a choice, and based on the history and data points we laid out above, Portraits has a hard road to viability. If someone wants to engage with a YouTuber, they can watch videos or leave a comment, or pay for the person’s Channel Membership or Patreon for more direct access.
Creators and viewers are closer than ever these days–so will fans really settle for a digital pull-string doll?
