It appears #PerfumeTok isn’t ready for AI-generated entrants.
When Slate Brands — the beauty incubator behind Brooke DeVard’s Naked Beauty and fitness guru Tracy Anderson’s fragrance line — introduced an AI-generated influencer via Instagram on July 10, backlash from the online fragrance community was swift.
Named Iris Lane — @its_irislane — and billed as the “first AI perfume influencer” in her bio, Lane’s account had uploaded three posts — including selfies and one Reel featuring an image of Le Labo and Jo Malone London products — when fragrance influencers began expressing their discontent with her introduction.
The now-deleted Iris Lane Instagram account.
On Monday, 2025 Sephora Squad member Elise Grenier (@elisselovessmells) posted a video to Instagram Reels about the account, expressing concern over a potential uptick in AI influencers. “Stay vigilant and support people on the internet who are real people,” she advised in the video. In the comments section, one fragrance influencer, @ashleymariedelgado, described the page as “dystopian.”
Another creator, @thenichesampler, posted a screenshot of Lane’s profile to her Instagram Story reading, “Had to block you because you don’t even have a nose,” while Christina Loff, who authors the Dry Down Diaries fragrance Substack, wrote on her own Story that the account was an “immediate block” for her, too.
“The best part of the fragrance community is sharing how stuff actually smells — watching each other on social, reading reviews, swapping scents — that’s how we decide what to try,” Loff said. “So much of it is about human connection, curiosity and nerding out together. For a brand to skip over all of that and use people’s content without asking feels like such a strange and lazy choice.”
Indeed, the online fragrance community has flourished in recent years as fragrance experts and content creators have democratized perfume knowledge on platforms like TikTok. Fragrance sales, too, have risen in tandem with this growth, and today the category is the fastest-growing in both mass and prestige beauty, per Circana.
On Tuesday, Slate wiped Lane’s page of its posts and uploaded an apology statement to the fragrance community; by Wednesday, the account had been deleted.
“Our intention is to explore how AI might enhance creative processes and storytelling, not replace the unique human ability to translate scent into emotion and culture,” Slate founder and chief executive officer Judah Abraham said in an email to WWD. “Our focus is on supporting new ideas, not imitating existing ones. We fully acknowledge that our initial execution missed the mark in communicating that nuance.”
The executive added that Slate’s interest in AI “does not change our strategy of working with, and compensating, human influencers. Partnering with creators remains central to how we launch products and tell stories. That being said, we remain genuinely intrigued by the possibilities of AI as a creative tool in beauty and fragrance. We’re currently reassessing how we might engage with this technology to bring value to the industry, creators alike and consumers.”
Computer-generated and AI influencers are not a new concept, though they remain relatively niche, and generally contentious. CGI influencer Shudu Gram — @shudu.gram on Instagram — was introduced in 2017 by British photographer Cameron-James Wilson as “the world’s first digital supermodel” and quickly garnered the attention of brands from Fenty Beauty to Louis Vuitton.
Many have criticized Wilson, who is white, for benefiting from the image of a Black woman: “A white photographer figured out a way to profit off of Black women without ever having to pay one,” wrote one X user shortly after Gram’s introduction.
Lil Miquela, another CGI influencer launched in 2016 by Los Angeles-based start-up Brud, today counts 2.4 million Instagram followers, and has similarly been met with mixed opinions though she’s racked up brand deals with PacSun, Calvin Klein and more.
Barcelona-based AI modeling agency The Clueless, meanwhile, launched Aitana Lopez as Spain’s first AI fashion model and virtual influencer in 2023. Today, the fictional 26-year-old she has 371,000 Instagram followers, up from 326,000 last August.