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Artificially created characters – virtual influencers – amass millions of followers on social media and affect digital natives’ engagement and decisionmaking in remarkable ways. Guided by the Uses and Gratification (U&amp;G) approach and the Uncanny Valley Theory, this study seeks to understand this phenomenon. By looking into followers’ engagement with virtual influencers, this study identifies and conceptualizes six primary motivations – namely,  novelty ,  information ,  entertainment ,  surveillance ,  esthetics , and  integration and social interaction . Furthermore, we found that most followers perceive virtual influencers as uncanny and authentically fake. However, followers also express acceptance of their staged fabrication where  curated flaws  and  self-justification  have been found to mitigate the effect of the uncanny valley. Virtual influencers are considered effective in building brand image and boosting brand awareness, but lack the persuasive ability to incite purchase intention due to a lack of  authenticity , a low  similarity to followers , and their weak  parasocial relations  with followers. These findings advance the extant literature on U&amp;G, influencer advertising, and virtual influencers in the era of artificial intelligence; provide insights into the mitigating factors of the uncanny valley; and yield theoretical and practical implications for the efficacy of virtual influencers in advertising campaigns.

Authentically Fake? How Consumers Respond to the Influence of Virtual Influencers