Social media influencers have become key in marketing, with their authenticity, credibility, and emotional connections driving customer purchases. The rise of virtual influencers introduces new dimensions in influencer marketing. Yet, it’s uncertain if the effectiveness seen in human influencers translates to virtual ones. Our article compares their marketing persuasiveness through two studies. The first study contrasts Instagram photos of an existing human and a virtual influencer. The second assesses a human-created YouTube video versus an artificial one generated from the photo of the same model. We aimed to compare authenticity, credibility, novelty, and parasocial relationships between the groups and their impact on purchase intentions in human/virtual contexts. Our results suggest that the findings regarding human influencers also apply to virtual influencers, and that their virtual nature is not necessarily noticed or evaluated by viewers. As such, artificial images can serve as marketing alternatives to real videos or photographs. However, perceived authenticity still matters for virtual models; therefore, their background story, appearance, and context should provide realistic cues for interpretation.