Brazilian virtual influencers and global stars: cases and lessons

Brazil's most famous virtual influencer is Lu do Magalu, created in 2003 by Magazine Luiza (Magalu), one of the country's largest retail chains. Other Brazilian brand cases include CB from the appliance and furniture chain Casas Bahia, Nat from cosmetics company Natura, and Sam from Samsung. Among celebrities, there's Satiko, the avatar of TV host Sabrina Sato, and, made with generative AI, Marisa Maiô, who went viral in 2025. Outside Brazil, the most cited names are Lil Miquela, Aitana López, Imma, Noonoouri and Shudu.

Below, each case covers who created it, when it started, a public number with its date, and what worked or went wrong. No number was copied from a profile's follower counter, which changes every day: they all come from the press, company reports or rankings, with the date next to them. Many sources are Brazilian outlets in Portuguese. Sources were checked on October 29, 2026.

Who are the most famous Brazilian virtual influencers?

Character	Created by	Since	Public number (date)
Lu do Magalu	Magazine Luiza (retail chain)	2003	33M+ followers across platforms (Magalu, Aug 2026); 7.1M+ on Instagram (HypeAuditor, Nov 2024)
CB	Casas Bahia (appliance and furniture stores)	2020, as a new version of the Baianinho mascot	3.8M+ on Instagram (HypeAuditor, Nov 2024)
Nat	Natura (cosmetics)	2016; face and name in 2018	We found no public number
Sam	Samsung, with Rio de Janeiro studio Lightfarm	Went viral in 2021; influencer since 2023	No profile of her own: appears on Samsung Brasil's profile
Satiko	Sabrina Sato (TV host), with Biobots	2021	35K followers (Aug 2022)
Pink	Bianca Andrade (Boca Rosa), with Biobots	2022	95K+ followers (Aug 2022)
Marisa Maiô	Raony Phillips, independent artist	2025	3.5M views on her 2nd video (Jun 2025)
Any Malu	Combo Estúdio	2015	707K on Instagram (HypeAuditor, Nov 2024)

Sources are in each case below, checked on October 29, 2026.

Lu do Magalu: how was Brazil's biggest virtual influencer built?

• Who created her and when: Magazine Luiza itself, in 2003, as the voice of the saleswoman in its e-commerce. In 2009, she appeared for the first time on Magalu's YouTube channel (Mercado&Consumo, April 18, 2023).
• Numbers: 1 million TikTok followers in 3 months, in November 2020 (Mercado&Consumo, November 6, 2020). More than 7.1 million on Instagram in November 2024 (Meio & Mensagem, November 12, 2024). More than 33 million across platforms, according to the Q2 2026 earnings release, which calls her "the world's No. 1 virtual influencer" (Magalu, August 2026).
• What worked: a Gold Lion at Cannes Lions, in the Social & Influencer category, in 2022 (Mercado&Consumo, June 24, 2022). A cosmetics line with Brazilian makeup artist Bruna Tavares in 2023. And Lu's WhatsApp, an AI sales channel that passed 18 million conversations, according to the 2026 release.
• What went wrong: in 2018, Lu publicly complained about the "crude come-ons" she got in the comments (Uai, August 31, 2018). And after three editions in a row at the top of HypeAuditor's Instagram ranking, she was overtaken in 2024 by the character Nobody Sausage (Meio & Mensagem, November 12, 2024). The "world's No. 1" in the release is Magalu's own claim, adding up all platforms.

CB from Casas Bahia: why did the brand bring Baianinho back?

• Who created him and when: in October 2020, Casas Bahia, a Brazilian chain of appliance and furniture stores, redesigned its mascot Baianinho and relaunched him "as a teenager called CB," presented as a digital influencer (Meio & Mensagem, October 16, 2020).
• Numbers: more than 3.8 million Instagram followers and 3rd place in HypeAuditor's 2024 ranking (Meio & Mensagem, November 12, 2024).
• What changed: in May 2026, the brand announced Baianinho's return (Propmark, May 17, 2026), "as he was before the redesign" (Meio & Mensagem, June 29, 2026). Millions of followers didn't stop the brand from bringing back the old character.

Nat from Natura: how did an assistant become a spokesperson?

• Who created her and when: Natura, a Brazilian cosmetics company that sells through a network of consultants, has had the virtual assistant since 2016. In 2018, the assistant got a face and the name Nat, in a project that involved marketing, customer service, IT and consultant relations (Meio & Mensagem, November 13, 2018).
• What worked: in 2022, Nat handled about 60% of the support requests from consultants, double the initial 30% target, and was the brand's spokesperson on Twitter (Convergência Digital, June 6, 2022).
• Numbers: we found no public follower count for Nat.

Sam from Samsung: what happens when a character goes viral on her own?

• Who created her and when: Rio de Janeiro studio Lightfarm, for Samsung (Marketech APAC, June 4, 2021). In 2021, the character went viral worldwide, and Samsung explained she was a virtual trainer for its sales team, not a voice assistant (Asiae, June 2, 2021).
• What worked: in 2023, Sam became a digital influencer, but only in Brazil (Voicebot, March 13, 2023), and debuted at Lollapalooza Brasil, with outfits posted on Samsung Brasil's profile (ABC da Comunicação, March 25, 2023).

Satiko and Pink: do celebrity avatars work?

• Satiko: the avatar of Brazilian TV host Sabrina Sato, launched in November 2021 by Biobots after three months of development (Forbes Brasil, November 22, 2021). In August 2022, she had 35,000 followers and deals with Renner, Coca-Cola, Boticário, Veloe and Eudora (Meio & Mensagem, August 9, 2022).
• Pink: the avatar of Bianca Andrade, the influencer and beauty entrepreneur known as Boca Rosa, launched in July 2022 by the same Biobots (Forbes Brasil, July 25, 2022). She had more than 95,000 followers in August 2022 (Meio & Mensagem, August 9, 2022).
• What it cost: in 2022, Forbes Brasil found that an avatar like this cost R$50,000 to R$150,000 (Brazilian reais) to create, and Biobots' CEO estimated up to R$70,000 a month to maintain it (Forbes Brasil, July 28, 2022).

Marisa Maiô: how did an AI TV host land an ad deal in four days?

• Who created her and when: artist Raony Phillips, who posted the first video of this host of a fictional TV show on June 3, 2025 (Showmetech, June 18, 2025), using a generative AI video model (Exame, June 7, 2025). The videos came out on the creator's own Instagram (Canaltech, June 9, 2025).
• Numbers: the debut video passed 1.5 million views, and the second one passed 3.5 million (IstoÉ Dinheiro, June 9, 2025).
• What worked: on June 7, 2025, four days after the debut, Magalu posted a sponsored ad for Dia dos Namorados, Brazil's Valentine's Day, starring the character (Exame, June 7, 2025). On the 11th, the classifieds site OLX followed (Meio & Mensagem, June 12, 2025).
• What went wrong: third parties copied the character in new videos, which raised copyright questions (The Conversation, republished by Outras Palavras, June 11, 2025). And the disclosure debate came with it: Ricardo Cavallini, an AI specialist at Singularity Brasil, told Meio & Mensagem that, even without a specific law, "ideally, the use of AI should be clearly flagged."

Any Malu: does an animated YouTuber count as a virtual influencer?

It counts, but it's not AI: it's animation. Any Malu, from Brazilian studio Combo Estúdio, joined YouTube in August 2015 and, by 2020, had 3 million subscribers and landed a show on Cartoon Network Latin America (Cartoon Brew, July 7, 2020). In 2024, she was 5th in HypeAuditor's ranking, with 707,000 Instagram followers (Meio & Mensagem, November 12, 2024).

Who are the most famous virtual influencers in the world?

Character	Created by	Since	Public number (date)
Lil Miquela	Brud (Trevor McFedries and Sara DeCou), now part of Dapper Labs	2016	Almost 2.5M on Instagram (CreatorDB, Sep 2025)
Aitana López	The Clueless agency (Rubén Cruz), Barcelona	2023	343K+ on Instagram (Euronews, Dec 2024)
Imma	Aww Inc., Tokyo	2018	250K+ on Instagram (Bloomberg, Sep 2020)
Noonoouri	Joerg Zuber and the Opium Effect agency	2017	200K+ on Instagram (Deutschland.de, Jan 2019)
Shudu	Cameron-James Wilson (The Diigitals)	2017	174K (Vice, May 2019)
Rozy	Sidus Studio X, South Korea	2020	130K+ on Instagram (CNN, Jul 2022)

Imma, Noonoouri, Shudu and Rozy show older numbers because we found no newer data in open sources as of October 29, 2026.

Lil Miquela: why did the pioneer become an example of what to avoid?

The account was created in 2016, and the profile only admitted she wasn't human in April 2018, when she already had more than 1 million followers (BuzzFeed News, April 27, 2018). That same year, she made TIME's list of the most influential people on the internet (TIME, June 28, 2018). In 2021, Dapper Labs bought Brud without disclosing the price (TechCrunch, October 4, 2021).

The stumbles came in 2019. Calvin Klein apologized for a campaign in which Miquela kissed Bella Hadid; critics accused it of queerbaiting, meaning using LGBTQIA+ representation as bait for attention (SBS, May 22, 2019). Months later, a vlog in which the character said she had been sexually assaulted was criticized for using real trauma as a script (Paper, December 14, 2019). In September 2025, she had almost 2.5 million Instagram followers and was losing nearly 15,000 a month on average (Digiday, September 11, 2025).

Aitana López: how much does an AI model actually make?

Barcelona agency The Clueless created Aitana after seeing projects stalled or canceled because of problems outside its control. Founder Rubén Cruz said the idea was not to depend on "other people who have egos." The creators say she can make up to €10,000 a month, but Euronews puts the average closer to €3,000, with just over €1,000 per ad. In December 2024, she had more than 343,000 followers (Euronews, updated December 27, 2024).

Her weak spot is disclosure. In 2023, the profile said she was AI only at the end of the bio, with #AIModel, and many followers didn't know (Genbeta, November 7, 2023).

Imma, Noonoouri and Shudu: what worked in fashion?

• Imma: created in 2018 by Tokyo's Aww Inc., which raised $1 million in 2020. She did campaigns for Porsche and IKEA (Bloomberg, September 3, 2020). From August 28 to 30, 2020, she "lived" in the window of IKEA's Harajuku store (MoguLive, August 25, 2020).
• Noonoouri: launched in late 2017 by Joerg Zuber and the Opium Effect agency, she worked with Marc Jacobs, Dior and Versace (Deutschland.de, January 14, 2019). In 2023, she signed with Warner Music and released the single "Dominoes," with a voice built from a human singer's recording (designboom, September 7, 2023).
• Shudu: created in 2017 by Cameron-James Wilson. Fenty Beauty reposted one of her posts (Refinery29, March 1, 2018), and she starred in a Balmain campaign (Dazed, August 30, 2018). The criticism: a white British man profiting from the image of a Black model without paying a Black model (Vice, May 22, 2019).

Rozy, FN Meka and Mia Zelu: what do the extremes show?

• Rozy: Sidus Studio X's Korean virtual influencer brought in about 1 billion won ($855,000) in 2021, through August, and got more than 100 ad offers, according to Sidus itself (Korea JoongAng Daily, August 14, 2021).
• FN Meka: the virtual rapper, with more than 10 million TikTok followers, signed with Capitol Records in August 2022 (NME, August 17, 2022). Days later, the label dropped him and apologized to the Black community for the project's insensitivity (CNN, via ABC17, August 24, 2022).
• Mia Zelu: an AI profile that "went" to Wimbledon in 2025 without ever being there. She had more than 160,000 followers, and the AI disclosure was hidden behind the "read more" button (Tennis.com, July 16, 2025).

What worked in these cases?

1. A role before fame. Lu started as the e-commerce voice, Nat as an assistant and Sam as a sales trainer. They became influencers later, backed by work that already existed.
2. Time. Lu's audience was built over more than two decades, and Lil Miquela took about two years to pass 1 million followers.
3. Getting to a new platform early. Lu joined TikTok in 2020 and reached 1 million organic followers in 3 months.
4. Real products and partnerships. Cosmetics with Bruna Tavares, IKEA and Porsche campaigns, Satiko's deals with five brands.
5. Speed. Marisa Maiô landed an ad with Magalu four days after her debut, while the buzz was still hot.

What went wrong in these cases?

1. A made-up story built on real pain. Lil Miquela's 2019 sexual assault vlog.
2. Stereotypes. FN Meka and the criticism of Shudu.
3. Hidden AI disclosure. Mia Zelu, behind "read more," and Aitana, at the end of the bio.
4. Harassment in the comments. Lu in 2018 and BIA, the virtual assistant of Brazilian bank Bradesco, which got 95,000 harassing messages in 2020 alone. The bank changed her replies and extended the rule to its human customer service (Mobile Time, August 24, 2021).
5. Brand fatigue. In an April 2025 study by the World Federation of Advertisers, 96% of brands with no plans to work with virtual influencers cite consumer trust as the reason (Digiday, September 11, 2025).
6. Copycats. Third parties imitated Marisa Maiô weeks after she appeared.

What should you learn before creating your AI influencer?

• Start with the role and the niche. Who she is, who she talks to and why anyone would follow her. The face comes later.
• Keep the same face. The cases that lasted have a stable identity. An influencer whose face changes with every post never becomes a reference.
• Disclose from the first post. The platform's AI label, a note in the bio and an ad disclosure on paid posts (#publi in Brazil). The rules for each platform are in the guide do AI influencers have to disclose that they're AI?.
• Don't invent experiences. An AI character never tested the product. The 2026 guide from CONAR, Brazil's advertising self-regulation council, says personal-experience testimonials must be genuine.
• Give the personality limits. Stay away from stereotypes and made-up trauma. That's what brought down FN Meka and Lil Miquela.
• Plan your moderation. Female virtual influencers get harassed, as Lu and BIA show. Decide in advance how yours will respond.
• Treat income as a hypothesis. Public figures, like Aitana's and Rozy's, were reported by the owners themselves and are the exception. Audiences take time, and no one can guarantee how much she'll bring in.

How does Avatrix help you start yours?

Avatrix is a Brazilian platform for creating AI influencers, with the interface in English (plus Spanish and Portuguese). It handles the part that took a 3D studio in the cases above: the face, the photos and the videos with the same character.

• Face: in Create Influencer, you go through 11 attribute steps and generate the Reference Image for 10 credits. In the character creator, for 8 credits you get a sheet with a close-up of the face and the body in three views.
• Same face in every photo: you always reattach the same Reference Image and change only the scene.
• Video: in UGC Video, with AI Video 1, or in Motion Transfer, which puts the character into a video that already exists.
• Pricing: monthly plans in US dollars, paid by card, or extra credit packs with a one-time card payment and no subscription. Pack credits don't expire. There's no free trial. Current prices are on the plans page.

For comparison: in 2022, a celebrity 3D avatar cost R$50,000 to R$150,000 (Brazilian reais) to create, according to Forbes Brasil. It's not the same product, since that was a custom 3D build made by a studio. But the barrier to testing a character has dropped, and what separates the cases that worked is still role, consistency and transparency.

The full step-by-step is in the guide to creating an AI influencer without showing your face, and the character creator is explained in the guide to the new AI influencer creator. If you want a complete persona for a brand or your own account, see the Avatrix AI influencer page.

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