It doesn’t get more 2018 than this: In mid-April, a Trump-supporting Instagram influencer named Bermuda hacked the account of fellow influencer Lil Miquela, who has over a million followers. Wait, no, there’s more: Bermuda refused to return the account unless Miquela promised to “tell the world the truth”—the truth being that Miquela is not a human being. And in case you haven’t caught on yet, neither is Bermuda. Both are CGI creations.

Lil Miquela has been a source of fascination for many on Instagram since not long after her account launched in April 2016, but for her first two years of existence, no one could definitively say who or what was behind the operation. The Bermuda hack-slash-PR-stunt solved at least part of the mystery, linking Miquela to Brud, a Los Angeles-based startup that specializes in “robotics, artificial intelligence and their applications to media businesses”—but the entire saga remains a master class in postmodern performance art, with Miquela announcing that she was “no longer working with [her] managers at Brud.” (For those who are curious about the nitty-gritty, The Cut has a good tick-tock of exactly how the hack and subsequent “reveals” played out.)

The entire charade will likely continue on for some time, if not indefinitely, and the exact operational logistics behind Lil Miquela’s account may never become clear. What is clear, however, is Miquela’s influence—and the fact that when it comes to confusing encounters with hyper-realistic CGI humans, she’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The Rise of the Brandfluencatars

Miquela isn’t just a flashy stunt: She has serious money-making potential. Already, the virtual influencer has partnered with Giphy and Prada and posed wearing Diesel and Moncler. In February, Miquela said she had never been paid to model a piece of fashion on her feed, but that could change at any moment. (Lil Miquela’s PR representatives did not respond to queries about whether she has posted any sponsored content since that statement.)

The demand from brands is certainly there. Just look at what happened to Shudu, a CGI “supermodel” created by fashion photographer Cameron-James Wilson. Her account went viral when Fenty Beauty reposted a “photo” of Shudu “wearing” the brand’s Mattemoiselle lipstick; since then, Wilson says, he’s gotten offers from a bounty of brands in the fashion and tech worlds, all hoping to work with the CGI model.

But virtual models and influencers like Lil Miquela and Shudu raise thorny questions. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission updated its endorsement guides to require influencers to disclose their marketing relationships and identify paid posts with a hashtag like #ad or #sponsored—but it’s not clear how those rules would apply to influencers who aren't human, and whose backers, like Lil Miquela’s, are shrouding themselves in mystery. “If this influencer doesn’t disclose that a post is paid for, who is the FTC going to go after?” asks Adam Rivietz, cofounder and CSO of the influencer marketing company #paid.

Beyond that, Rivietz says, virtual influencers like Lil Miquela raise other concerns. After all, why should followers trust the opinion of someone who doesn’t exist? “Virtual influencers aren’t trying on a clothing brand," Rivietz points out. "They can’t tell you, ‘This shirt is softer than another and that’s one of the reasons you should buy it.’ They’re not real people, so they can’t give a totally authentic endorsement.” (Then again, according to Ryan Detert, CEO of the influencer marketplace Influential, those are the very traits that make virtual influencers so attractive to companies: “They’re much easier to control.”)