An Amish Avatar and an A.I. Monk Are Pitching Supplements on Social Media

Influencers have long hawked supplements on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Increasingly, the influencers are fake.

Melanskia is not your typical Amish woman. She boasts more than 300,000 followers on Instagram and warns them about the perils of store-bought foods. She touts the benefits of removing “industrial waste” from the liver with a drink mix her followers can buy on Amazon.

With her modest white hair-covering and wire-rim spectacles, Melanskia is earnest, charming and quite convincing. She is also not real.

She is one of a handful of synthetic influencers created with artificial intelligence who are promoting an untested dietary supplement, Modern Antidote, which sells for just under $50 a jar. There is no disclosure on her account that everything about her is A.I.-generated.