Aliyah, a light-skinned Black woman dressed in country-western gear, is struggling to sell metal buckles she handmade on TikTok. In a video for the social media platform from March, she cries to the camera and pleads for views: “Even as a black woman, I have more faith that white women will stay 13 seconds [on this video] to save my belt buckle business,” the onscreen text reads. She wipes a tear off her cheek.

But Aliyah isn’t real, and neither are her supposedly handmade products – she’s one of many AI-generated influencers created to sell mass-produced products via dropshipping on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. Identical belt buckles …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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