How Qatar Airways is positioning its AI brand ambassador as a travel influencer

When pro tennis star Novak Djokovic shared a tennis court selfie with a Qatar Airways flight attendant to his Instagram story last month, thousands of curious fans clicked over to the account of the woman tagged in the photo. But many of them quickly discovered that Sama, the woman posing with Djokovic, wasn’t a real flight attendant—or even human, for that matter. In reality, she’s an AI-generated brand ambassador for Qatar Airways. The airline aims to develop Sama into a travel influencer as part of a strategy to reach new consumers with engaging influencer content, rather than stiff corporate messaging. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sama (@samaonthemove) Over 8,300 people followed the Instagram account Qatar Airways created for Sama, @SamaOnTheMove, in just the account’s first month on the platform. As of this writing, the 16 posts on the account—which combine Sama’s AI-generated avatar with real-life imagery, such as photos of other flight attendants or fellow Qatar Airways ambassadors (including Djokovic)—have collectively garnered more than 10 million views, said Babar Rahman, the airline’s senior VP of marketing and corporate communications. And thus far, all that growth has been organic, he told Ad Age. “What Sama is doing for us is essentially giving out the brand [messaging] in a more subconscious way,” Rahman said. With a combination of travel influencer-inspired content, such as photos of her enjoying afternoon tea in London or strolling on a beach in New Zealand, and behind-the-scenes images of life as a flight attendant, Sama’s account is “helping people understand that this is what happens when you travel on Qatar Airways, or when you go to a new destination. This is what Qatar Airways brings to the table,” he added. “She’s cool, she’s smart, and she’s loving her job being a cabin crew [member] because this allows her to travel the world,” Rahman said. “She can be anywhere at any time, and she can post just like a normal human being would post about her travel experiences.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sama (@samaonthemove) Sama’s Instagram account is just one piece of Qatar Airways’ larger strategy of leaning into social media to reach new global audiences. In its most recent annual report, Qatar Airways declared itself “the world’s number one airline across social channels,” with over 47 million total followers, and highlighted its position as the airline with the most followers globally on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, specifically. For comparison, Ryanair, a low-cost European airline that has frequently gone viral for its “unhinged” social strategy, has roughly 5 million total followers, while United Airlines has an online audience of about 5.3 million. Qatar Airways cited its social media growth as one factor that fueled the airline’s “strongest financial performance in its 27-year-history” in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, propelling its total revenue to $22.2 billion, a 6% (or $1.3 billion) increase from the previous fiscal year. Although the photos and videos on Sama’s account leverage generative AI, both the captions across those posts and her responses in the comments section are handled by the Qatar Airways marketing team, Rahman said. The airline works with UneeQ, a company that develops so-called “digital humans” like Sama, to create the visuals for those Instagram posts, said Danny Tomsett, UneeQ’s CEO. UneeQ has partnered with roughly 100 brands to develop and launch AI-powered digital avatars, including skincare brand Kiehl’s and financial services company UBS, Tomsett said. Qatar Airways is the first brand that UneeQ has worked with to take one of those digital avatars to social media, he said. Brands typically come to UneeQ looking to add a human face to AI-powered chatbot experiences that would otherwise be limited to text exchanges—Kiehl’s, for instance, turned to UneeQ to build an AI skincare expert shoppers can interact with at in-store kiosks, according to UneeQ’s website. Indeed, Sama was initially launched as an AI-powered avatar that Qatar Airways customers could converse with and direct questions toward, both on the Qatar Airways app and in the airline’s immersive digital platform QVerse. But the airline has been building a larger brand strategy around Sama that involves giving her “a personality that people will get to know through other channels,” such as her newly launched Instagram account, rather than just interacting with her when they’re seeking customer service, Tomsett said. Qatar Airways “didn’t want to just create a chatbot like everyone else, or some kind of sterile technology that everyone has to use—they really wanted to create a personality that people saw as a brand ambassador,” he said. Rahman echoed that point, saying, “Today, we all speak to Siri, we all speak to Google’s AI, Gemini, but what you miss there is the human touch. And when you’re speaking to a visual person, even if they’re driven by AI, you can connect with them emotionally and on a deeper level.” And, unlike a human influencer or celebrity brand ambassador, Sama “is never going to go away,” Tomsett added. “They never have to renegotiate that contract with her. That’s now an asset, a brand asset, that [Qatar Airways] is building a lot of value into.” Additionally, for brands like Qatar Airways, leveraging an AI brand ambassador eliminates the risk of associating the brand with a human influencer who could land themselves in online controversy. Or, as Tomsett more bluntly put it, “She’s not going to get a cocaine habit and all of a sudden end up on some news feed, or say something inappropriate on X.” More: Everything to know about creator-brand contracts Also read: Measuring creator and influencer marketing ROI AI influencer backlash Consumers, however, will likely be less enthusiastic about Sama and other AI brand ambassadors launching social media accounts than their creators are. In a series of global surveys by market research firm YouGov, over half (51%) of consumers said they’re “uncomfortable” with brands creating a digital brand ambassador instead of partnering with a human celebrity or influencer. Roughly one-third (34%) reported feeling “comfortable” with brands doing so, while the remaining 15% said they “don’t know” what their feelings are toward AI-generated brand ambassadors. That unease many consumers feel about AI-powered ambassadors has manifested in some hostile comments across Sama’s Instagram posts. On the photo of Sama posing with Djokovic, for example, one of the top comments reads, “What in the ai influencer crap is this.” And on Sama’s post about visiting the beaches of New Zealand, one commenter wrote, “[This is] getting outa hand. How tf we supposed to know what’s real or not anymore.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sama (@samaonthemove) Tomsett said UneeQ deliberately designs digital brand ambassadors such as Sama to appear humanlike but not photorealistic to avoid confusing consumers about whether they’re real people. “We’re very intentional about them not being deepfakes,” he said, noting the company uses computer-generated imagery rather than deepfake technology to create its digital ambassadors. “They need to, obviously, have a level of sophistication and emotion and expression, but it’s not about trying to fool anyone into thinking that they are human.” Read more: AI detector can monitor for brand deepfakes A brand not explicitly disclosing that they’re using an AI-generated ambassador, or leveraging deepfakes more broadly, can shake consumers’ trust in the brand, Tomsett added, “and that’s where you get the backlash.” Sama’s Instagram bio identifies her as a “digital creator” and part of Qatar Airways’ “virtual cabin crew,” and most of her posts are labeled as AI-generated content. Simply indicating such content was generated with AI may not be enough to avoid criticism, however. In the same week that Qatar Airways launched Sama’s Instagram account, Meta deleted several Instagram accounts it had created for AI characters in response to a surge of backlash against the accounts. View on Threads At this point, most of the comments across Sama’s Instagram posts are positive, or at least neutral. Rahman is optimistic that his team can develop Sama into a true travel influencer, which he’s defined as her Instagram account reaching 250,000 followers. After all, he and the Qatar Airways team chose to begin Sama’s creator journey on Instagram “because we see that a lot of travel influencers start with this channel, but then they go beyond and create content on some other channels,” he said. While Qatar Airways is sticking with Instagram for Sama’s account for the foreseeable future, she, like other influencers, “will have that career progression” to other social platforms as she grows her audience, Rahman said. Follow us on social media X Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn YouTube

How Qatar Airways is positioning its AI brand ambassador as a travel influencer

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