Reah Keem is just like you and me – she loves working with music, spending holidays abroad and is very upset that she can’t visit any cool places right now. The biggest difference, however, is that Reah Keem is not a real person.
LG introduced Reah Keem as a virtual influencer who appeared during CES’s live presentation to reveal the company’s new line of LG CLOi UV-C robots. The robot, which was announced by LG in December, is designed for high-traffic areas, such as hotels, and circulates in bright UV-C light that should reduce exposure to harmful germs. Keem’s job was to talk about the importance of CLOi UV-C for her own life, using the chance to talk about how excited she was to start traveling again in the real world – a world in which she technically does not exist.
She may not need oxygen to breathe, but Keem is definitely making his mark in the real world (including living in Seoul, apparently). She has about 6,000 followers on Instagram and a page on SoundCloud with exactly one song. For what it’s worth, it’s very good.
Virtual influencers are not new, but the appearance of a virtual creator at a highly virtualized and socially distant CES made it clear how strange this event was. It is nothing short of bizarre to watch a virtual influencer scarily need to say things like “I’m going to relax in my studio”, working on some sick beats, until the pandemic is over and a safe trip can happen again.
Although, paying an influencer to promote something they don’t care about seems entirely right for the influencer ecosystem. It is not clear whether LG really created Reah Keem, or whether LG paid for its services; a press release says only that LG “introduced” Keem.
Will Keem have a future outside this LG live broadcast? Will she face competition from other great virtual influencers, including Miquela Sousa (better known as Lil Miquela) or Shudu? Now, she is working on her sick beats in her cool home studio, but the virtual influencer scene is heating up.