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Natalia Novak was presented in a 2023 Futurism profile as a glamorous social-media influencer—but she was not a real woman. Her images were AI-generated, and the person operating the account was a software systems engineer identified only as Pierre. He said he usually called himself her “manager,” a choice that captured the project’s central tension: a human creator building an audience around a fictional person.
Natalia Novak: a persona, not a human influencer
Futurism’s August 16, 2023 interview described Natalia Novak as a fictional, AI-generated influencer. Her posts presented a polished glamour lifestyle—beaches, shopping and social events—but the images did not document a real woman’s life. They were made with an AI image generator. The article described her as 21, but that was part of the persona, not a verified age belonging to a human model. (Futurism’s profile and interview)
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That distinction matters because “AI influencer” can describe different things. A human creator might use AI to retouch a photograph; a virtual influencer might be a CGI character; or, as in Natalia’s case, the visible person and lifestyle imagery may be synthetic while a human operator handles the account. The article confirms AI-generated imagery, but does not identify the model, prompting method, editing workflow or whether every image came from a single consistent identity system.
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsWhy Pierre called himself her manager
The operator was identified as Pierre, a software systems engineer in his twenties. The article did not provide a verified full name, location, employer or personal account, so there is no sound basis for identifying him further. Pierre said, “I usually just call myself her manager.” He explained that he was playing a character and did not want to put the human operator at the center of Natalia’s presentation.
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“Manager” is more than a convenient label here. In entertainment, a manager represents a performer; in this case, the supposed performer was an invented digital persona, and the manager was also the person creating and operating her. The framing preserves distance between Pierre and Natalia, makes the account feel like a familiar celebrity operation, and leaves authorship less visible than it would be if every post foregrounded its human maker.
Photorealism, exaggeration and the clues in the images
The profile emphasized Natalia’s photorealistic appearance and deliberately heightened glamour: a very curvaceous figure, polished hair, revealing outfits and luxury-coded settings. Such exaggeration makes a character immediately recognizable in a crowded feed. Photorealism, meanwhile, lets synthetic images sit alongside ordinary influencer photographs without an obvious change in format.
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The images also reportedly retained familiar generative-AI flaws, including distorted hands and repetitive backgrounds. Those defects can make an image look less convincing, but they may also signal that it is synthetic. Relying on errors as disclosure is fragile: a viewer may not notice them, may treat them as ordinary image mistakes, or may encounter future images with fewer visible artifacts.
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Did followers know she was AI-generated?
The evidence does not support a clean yes or no. Pierre said creators used terms such as “virtual” or “AI,” along with hashtags and visual clues, including imperfect hands. But the article also observed that many commenters did not openly refer to the account’s artificial nature. That silence cannot show whether they missed the clues, understood the fiction and joined in, regarded the account as entertainment, or simply did not care whether Natalia was real.
Nor does the profile establish what share of followers understood the premise. “Virtual” may be a meaningful signal to some users, but it is less explicit than saying that no human model exists and that the images are generated. The more an account invites personal connection or sells access, the more consequential that distinction becomes. A clue that preserves a fantasy is not necessarily disclosure that every follower will understand.
Scam, performance or creative experiment?
Pierre rejected the idea that projects like Natalia’s should automatically be treated as schemes to deceive men. As he described it, motives could include self-expression, artistic and technical experimentation, roleplay, and the challenge of attracting an audience. The Futurism article said signs of scamming were sparse in the examples it discussed. That is a limited observation—not proof that AI personas as a category are transparent or harmless, or that Natalia’s account never misled anyone.
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It is more useful to distinguish the activity from the way it is conducted. A clearly labeled fictional character selling entertainment is different from an account that implies a real person is privately pursuing a follower. The stakes rise when a synthetic persona accepts money, sells sexualized or private content, encourages romantic attachment, or carries on one-to-one conversations without making clear who—or what—is on the other end. The interview raises these questions but does not establish that Natalia used private messages to deceive followers or operated a paid account.
Roleplay was also part of Pierre’s account of the broader scene. He said some people used virtual personas to present themselves as a gender different from their own and that people sometimes formed relationships through fictional identities. Those remarks describe possibilities discussed in the interview; they do not establish Pierre’s own identity or motives, and they should not be conflated with transgender identity.
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What the business model did—and did not—show
The article described subscription services such as Patreon and OnlyFans as possible routes for creators to sell behind-the-scenes access or sexual content. It also said Pierre was working on a group called Rebel Runway Agency. These details point to two distinct kinds of monetization: charging an audience for subscriptions, images or community access, and selling business services such as creator management or synthetic-model production.
But the profile did not verify that Natalia herself had a functioning paid subscription, nor did it provide her subscriber numbers, revenue, conversion rate or profit. It did not establish that Rebel Runway Agency became a successful company. Reported audience attention—even the article’s reference to tens of thousands of reactions or fans—is not the same as an audited follower count, paying customer base or sustainable business.
An early example, not a current account audit
Natalia was part of an emerging 2023 scene of AI-generated personas on social platforms, not evidence that she was the first, largest or most successful. Virtual characters and digitally constructed celebrities existed before generative image tools; the significant change was that those tools lowered the technical barrier to producing photorealistic social content.
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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →The interview is best read as a snapshot of that early experiment: a human operator, a fictional glamour persona, an audience asked to navigate hints and ambiguity, and monetization ideas not backed by published financial evidence. The reporting available here does not verify whether Natalia, Pierre or Rebel Runway Agency remains active in 2026. It also does not resolve what disclosure should look like. Its enduring question is whether audiences should have to infer that an influencer is artificial—or whether an account built around a synthetic person should say so plainly.
Source: Futurism, August 16, 2023. The interview is the basis for the claims above; it is not an independent audit of the account or its finances.
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