Fakefluencers are draining brand budgets, can AI tools fix India’s influencer problem?

Ten thousand followers. Two thousand likes. One problem, it’s all fake.

India’s influencer economy is booming, valued at ₹3,600 crore in 2024, and expected to grow 25% in 2025. But underneath the surface, a crisis is brewing: brands are losing serious money to inflated follower counts, ghost engagement, and creators who don’t drive any meaningful business outcome.

In a digital world where ₹1,500 can buy 10K followers, 'influence' is easy to fake, but trust isn’t. And with bots and engagement pods distorting metrics, the real cost is falling on brand managers who still chase vanity numbers instead of verified value.

How much fake is too fake?

According to the WPP Media x Kantar India Influencer Marketing Report 2025, over 83% of marketers say influencer discovery is one of their biggest challenges. Even worse, many are still relying on top-level metrics like follower count and likes hence leaving them vulnerable to creators who game the system.

The problem too isn’t always easy to spot. Fake influence doesn’t just look like bots, it looks like fast-follower growth, copy-paste comments, recycled engagement pods, and geo-mismatched audiences. In fact, way back in 2022 a report on spotting fake followers recommended that marketers look beyond likes, and examine comment quality, sudden spikes in followers, and audience authenticity to detect fraud.

At the moment the problem has become a credibility crisis. Consumers trust creators and 69% of Indian users rely on influencers for information before buying but that trust erodes when audiences are inflated and content isn’t reaching real people.  In fact, even creators with six-digit followings are being exposed across social listening platforms for inflated metrics and misrepresented engagement.

How AI is becoming the auditor of trust

Here’s the good news: marketers finally have tools that can keep up and it’s not an Excel sheet or manual audit team.

Artificial Intelligence is quickly becoming the industry's best defense against fakefluencers. Today’s advanced tools are trained to detect:

• Bot clusters and fake comment loops
  

• Geo-data mismatches (e.g., a 'Bangalore' creator with 40% followers from Turkey)
  

• Recycled content or pre-loved follower accounts
  

• Suspicious follower-to-engagement ratios
  
  

Unlike traditional checks, AI systems flag suspicious behavior before signing the contract not after the budget is spent.

Influencer discovery tools like Modash and HypeAuditor now offer pre-vetting systems that provide 'authenticity scores,' estimate audience credibility, and highlight red flags. And more platforms are layering in AI to streamline selection, optimise campaign performance, and reduce  wasted spend.

Today, many advanced platforms are embedding AI-led influencer scoring as part of their discovery process helping brands eliminate low-quality creators before a single rupee is spent. This shift is already reducing campaign waste and boosting real engagement, especially in performance-first sectors like D2C, BFSI, and healthcare.

Moving from popularity to credibility

The industry is starting to catch on and according to the same WPP report:

• 39% of marketers now prioritise engagement rates over reach
  

• 85% of manufacturing brands evaluate content quality as the top metric
  

• 72% of brands prefer long-term influencer relationships over one-off bursts
  
  

This marks a clear shift, from vanity-led mass reach to niche-led credibility. Micro-influencers and content-first creators are winning across categories like finance, consumer durables, and beauty , where influence is built through relevance, not just scale.

It makes sense because real followers engage. Real communities convert. Fakefluencers might fill a report deck, but they won’t move product.

What brand managers should do today

For briefing an influencer campaign next week, here are four simple things to do differently:

Vet with AI-first platforms: free tools like HypeAuditor can flag red flags instantly.

Ask for platform-level insights: not just screenshots, but audience breakdowns, top geo-locations, and engagement quality.

Look for anomalies: sudden 30K follower jumps, identical emoji comments, or recycled caption formats are all signs.

Prioritise resonance, not just reach: that regional teacher or finance creator with 20K real followers? They’ll outperform the “Instagram model” with 200K fakes.

The game isn’t about chasing the loudest voice anymore it’s about trusting the most credible one.

Final word

Influencer marketing is evolving. It's no longer about who shouts the loudest it's about who gets listened to. In 2025, success belongs to marketers who audit for authenticity, build trust-first strategies, and use AI not just to save time, but to save and build credibility.

This article is penned by Krisneil Peres, Co-Founder, Fame Keeda
Disclaimer: The article features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the stance of the publication.