Nairobi, Sept. 13 -- A social media influencer campaign can appear to be performing well: tens of posts praising a product, hashtags gaining traction, and an apparent steady stream of consumers talking about a brand.

Yet some of that ostensible enthusiasm may not be as organic as it looks.

The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) to mass-produce social media content is creating a new problem for companies buying influencer marketing without knowing that they are paying for manufactured influence and not genuine engagement.

A new investigation by the US AI giant Anthropic has lifted the lid on how the same AI tools being used to create political propaganda are repurposed for commercial marketing.

Between December 2025 and August...