About this episode

In this episode, Taylor Lorenz interviews Rebecca Jennings about the rise of AI-driven bot farms and their implications for the influencer industry.

To listen to the full episode and get access to more bonus episodes, an ad-free listening experience, and my weekly newsletter, subscribe to my Patreon or Substack 👇🏻 Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at https://www.usermag.co Support my work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/taylorlorenz What happens when startups straight up stop hiring human creators and start leveraging industrial-scale bot farms powered by AI? In this bonus episode of Power User, I sit down with New York Magazine's Rebecca Jennings to discuss her investigation into Doublespeed, a massively viral new venture-backed startup founded by 21-year-old entrepreneur Zuhair Lakhani that aims to replace human influencers with an army of AI-generated personas. They've already raised over $1 million from Andreessen Horowitz. From sneaker botting and manufactured restaurant waitlists to operating thousands of cold Android phones from a desktop computer, Rebecca and I unpack the dark mechanics and patterns behind these bot armies running on phone farms in LA. We also discuss the total atrophy of the internet as we know it. We break down how AI bot farms work, why brands are turning to AI instead of human influencers…

People in this episode

Host: Taylor Lorenz

Guest: Rebecca Jennings

Topics covered

• AI bot farms
• influencer industry
• venture-backed startups
• digital authenticity
• political manipulation
• advertising

Keywords

• bot farms
• AI influencers
• Doublespeed
• Zuhair Lakhani
• Andreessen Horowitz
• digital marketing
• social media
• authenticity
• political manipulation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Doublespeed, Andreessen Horowitz, New York Magazine

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