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a16zDigital Humans and the Story Behind Lil Miquela
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Lil Miquela's creators on building digital humans and scalable celebrity
- Trevor McFedries says Brud aimed to build a 'Disney on social' by telling fictional stories through a photorealistic character on platforms then seen as nonfiction spaces, in order to spread tolerance and empathy.
- McFedries and Isaac Bratzel describe design choices like Miquela's age, Brazilian heritage, space buns and freckles, and a reverse media pyramid that started with still images and let fan engagement shape the story.
- Bratzel explains that long-form animated digital humans were extremely expensive, which bottlenecked scaling, so the team used constraints like Bloco's mask, limited hair and hidden feet to work efficiently.
- Both argue that AI lowers barriers but raises competition, making it easy to be good and hard to be excellent, and that audiences will seek substance; McFedries also says authenticity and 'realness' are often misjudged.
- They discuss early ethical pushback such as verified accounts for fictional characters, compare it to today's reactions to AI and NFTs, and look ahead to persistent, interoperable 3D characters, decentralized ownership, and scalable celebrity.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasNarrative matters more than the technology
Both guests stress that tools like AI don't guarantee success, comparing it to cheap music software not making everyone a star; connecting with fans through story is the hard part.
Start small and let fans shape the story
Brud inverted the traditional media pyramid, beginning with a character and still images and using fast feedback to decide what longer-form content to make.
Recognizable features and intentional constraints help
Space buns and freckles made Miquela instantly recognizable, as in a Halloween costume, while constraints like a masked Bloco, bald heads and hidden feet reduced technical difficulty.
Digital humans are very costly at long-form quality
Bratzel says social posts could reach about 90% quality at much lower cost, but animated content for film or games needed big investment, which blocked scaling Miquela.
AI will make competent work easy and excellence rare
McFedries argues backward-looking models create feedback loops of sameness, like Netflix's repeated formats, so audiences will seek substance and unique skill.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesIt was like, can we create Disney on social? Can we tell stories that are as engaging as a Kardashian or a Jake Paul, but kind of imbue th- th- these ideologies that make for a more tolerant, empathetic world?
— Trevor McFedries
We don't think exponentially, we think additively, so we're like, "Oh yeah, you add that, that third dimension," and it's like, yeah, just another layer. And it's not. It's completely a whole order of magnitude shift.
— Isaac Bratzel
It's gonna be really easy to be good at things. Good at making music, good at making visual art, good at, you know, creating content. It's gonna be really hard to be excellent
— Trevor McFedries
the idea that you're gonna, like, reject this and then it's just gonna stop in its tracks is just the most w- wishful thinking thing I've ever, I could ever imagine, right?
— Isaac Bratzel
Pikachu is the reason you get Pokémon Go. You know, you don't wanna just walk around your yard scanning stuff. You wanna follow Pikachu somewhere.
— Trevor McFedries
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
