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a16zDigital Humans and the Story Behind Lil Miquela
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CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 2:08
Intro: Lil Miquela and the Brud Origin Story
Steph Smith introduces Lil Miquela, a virtual influencer created in 2016 by Brud, and her guests Trevor McFedries and Isaac Bratzel. She previews the topics of design, narrative, the uncanny valley and ethics.
- •Lil Miquela is a 19-year-old virtual influencer who has partnered with brands like Samsung and Prada
- •Trevor was Brud's co-founder and Isaac its Chief Design and Innovation Officer
- •The conversation covers design, narrative, the uncanny valley and ethics
- 2:08 – 5:40
The Key Insight: Disney on Social
Trevor explains the 2016 moment that inspired Miquela: narrative power online, the Will & Grace polling data, and the idea of telling fictional stories on social platforms. He also describes why a photorealistic human character was a risk given the uncanny valley.
- •Trevor cites meme culture and 4chan as showing how narratives shape young people's beliefs
- •The Will & Grace dataset suggested fiction could shift public opinion
- •The vision was a modern Disney that starts on social, where the eyeballs are
- •No one was doing photorealistic bipedal human characters because of the uncanny valley
- •Keeping the character familiar was meant to reduce the novelty of a fictional account on social
- 5:40 – 10:22
Designing Miquela: Early Technical Steps and Aesthetic Choices
Isaac describes joining after Trevor had begun making the character in software like Daz 3D, and then making her realistic and animatable. Trevor explains deliberate choices: Brazilian and Spanish heritage, being 19 forever, and speaking to young people at eye level.
- •Trevor had already started the design in Daz 3D before Isaac arrived
- •Miquela was made half Brazilian and half Spanish to reach underserved Latin American audiences
- •Her age of 19 reflects the pattern that people engage with media aimed five to seven years older
- •Stories were meant to speak to young people at eye level, about issues like climate change and economic strife
- •Fashion embraced her unexpectedly
- 10:22 – 14:01
Parafiction and Early Signs of Success
Trevor describes parafiction, telling fictional stories in spaces reserved for nonfiction, and how moments like Coachella and Shane Dawson's video gave Miquela credibility. Isaac recalls seeing fans defend and extend her story, and both discuss keeping her instantly recognizable with space buns and freckles.
- •Parafiction is compared to professional wrestling
- •Coachella and brand involvement lent credibility
- •Shane Dawson's video added a meta-narrative layer
- •Fans knew the backstory better than Isaac at times
- •Space buns and freckles kept the character recognizable, like a Halloween costume
- 14:01 – 17:44
Building the Narrative and the Inverted Media Pyramid
Steph asks how important narrative is in a flood of virtual influencers. Trevor says narrative is unthinkably hard and describes inverting the traditional media pyramid, starting with a character and still images, then moving to longer form. Isaac describes the fast feedback loop and the data-driven operation.
- •Narrative-driven media businesses must stay interesting forever
- •Brud inverted the pyramid by starting with still images and working toward film and television
- •Integrating Miquela into the real world gave fans depth to speculate on
- •Brud was a technology organization disguised as a media organization, with data science teams building taxonomies
- •Fan engagement informed longer-form content such as a five-minute music video
- 17:44 – 19:20
The Technology and Its Bottlenecks
Isaac explains the order-of-magnitude gap between still images on Instagram and long-form animated digital humans, a gap normally reserved for big-budget films and games. Expensive content and platform limits made scaling hard and forced opportunity-cost trade-offs.
- •Long-form animation of hyperrealistic humans was an order of magnitude harder than stills
- •Miquela couldn't simply be dropped into a video game or an HBO show
- •The team weighed opportunity costs of diverting from Miquela's narrative
- •Scaling would have required a large investment to get past the bottleneck
- 19:20 – 23:48
Expanding Past Miquela: Spatial Computing Bet and Design Constraints
Trevor explains the bet that characters would pull people into emerging platforms, and how COVID accelerated digital economies before generative tools were ready. He describes constraints like Bloco's mask and baldness to simplify rigging, and Isaac explains the 90% quality, 10% cost approach.
- •The bet was that characters, like Pikachu for Pokémon Go, would pull people into spatial computing
- •COVID accelerated digital economies before generative media tools were ready
- •Facial rigs, feet and hair are hard, so Bloco wears a mask and is bald
- •Isaac says everything in this work breaks and crashes
- •Social media allowed aiming for about 90% quality at a fraction of the cost
- 23:48 – 25:08
Democratization, Competition and Where to Have an Edge
Isaac compares AI tools making creation easy to Ableton making everyone a superstar: skill and connection with fans still matter. Trevor says lower barriers just mean more participants competing globally, so creators should know where they have an edge.
- •Isaac says anyone can do it with AI is like saying cheap Ableton makes anyone a superstar
- •Technology should help people who have the desire to tell stories
- •On TikTok you compete against the globe
- •Trevor says to identify where you have an advantage, which for Brud was music
- 25:08 – 28:35
Beyond 2D Generative AI: 3D Avatars and Digital Humans
Isaac says his company focuses on 3D rather than 2D image tools like Midjourney. He argues the extra dimension is an order-of-magnitude shift and that scalable digital humans could be a human connective layer in virtual worlds.
- •Midjourney-style tools are described as pixel pushing in 2D
- •3D avatars and worlds can be immersive and interoperable
- •Adding a dimension is a whole order of magnitude shift
- •Characters and narratives can be the connective layer of virtual worlds
- 28:35 – 33:45
Reality, Authenticity and the Race to the Bottom in Media
Steph asks whether most online content will become non-real and how that changes our relationship to it. Trevor says reality is already a sliding scale and expects AI to make being good easy but excellence hard, with people then seeking substance. They discuss authenticity, contemporary art and K-pop.
- •Trevor notes his Instagram feed is full of scripted or altered content presented as real
- •AI will make it easy to be good, hard to be excellent
- •Trevor compares algorithmic sameness to Netflix's chef's-table-style shows
- •People use authenticity and craft as measures of quality
- •K-pop is cited as scripted but openly presented, so no deception
- •Isaac ties it back to storytelling and digital humans
- 33:45 – 39:48
Early Pushback and the Fear of New Technology
Trevor says Brud aimed to go first and set the tone, noting that objections like verified accounts for fake characters now seem passé. He sees parallels with current reactions to AI and NFTs. Isaac describes how people misjudged real versus CG elements and how artists fear AI.
- •Brud expected to make mistakes publicly and set boundaries for later creators
- •Concern about a virtual character having a verified account now seems silly
- •Trevor expects digital goods to be seen as valuable and AI flaws like fingers to be fixed quickly
- •Isaac says viewers hunting for fakes called real photographic elements fake about half the time
- •Isaac says AI backlash echoes reactions to past technology, and urges working to improve it rather than rejecting it
- 39:48 – 43:26
New Technological Unlocks: Decentralized Influencers and the Metaverse
Steph asks how advancing technology might change virtual influencers. Trevor discusses decentralized influencers and compensating cultural originators via blockchains. Isaac describes persistence, synchronicity and interoperability as the metaverse's key elements.
- •Trevor discusses decentralized influencers being built at Dapper
- •Trevor views influencers as potential rent-seeking middlemen who capture value from cultural creators
- •Digital payments could help repatriate value to communities that originated cultural trends
- •Isaac highlights persistence, synchronicity and interoperability
- •Characters can become living stories that move across mediums
- 43:26 – 47:12
Scalable Influencers, Parasocial Limits and Virtual Religion
Steph suggests technology could let virtual influencers engage with every fan, easing parasocial limits. Trevor raises whether scarcity matters for value. The talk ends with the idea that a virtual influencer could someday inspire a religion, tied to Trevor's concept of scalable celebrity.
- •Celebrities are limited by time while virtual influencers could talk with every fan
- •Isaac says scalable celebrity was hard for Miquela because animation was costly
- •Trevor asks whether scarcity and variable rewards drive stickiness
- •Both think a religion built around a virtual influencer is plausible
- •Trevor recalls his first employee asking what scalable celebrity means
