Research Finds Temu Spent Up to $962 Million on Meta Ads Built Around Fake AI Influencers

A researcher who follows online risk for a living just found something that should worry anyone who buys anything off a social media ad: some of the "real people" pushing products may not exist.

According to research from Online Risk Labs, a nonprofit based in the Czech Republic, Temu spent as much as $962 million on Meta ad campaigns across the U.K. and 27 EU countries over 16 months ending in April 2026. A huge chunk of that spending, the group's data suggests, went toward boosting content from creators who appear to be fabricated.

The research, reported by Fortune, examined the top 100 creators boosted by Temu's partnership ads on Facebook and Instagram. Of those 100, 73 are likely fake accounts, according to ORL's analysis.

The Case of Ya Lily

The top creator in the UK and Europe goes by "Ya Lily" on Instagram, under the handle @findgadgetswithme, with 183,000 followers. On Facebook she operates under a different name entirely, "Must good," with 129,000 more followers. Her Facebook bio lists a location of "England, Birmingham, MO, United States," a place that does not correspond to any real jurisdiction, along with the phrase "You are my dream of dead." Her email address appears to be Chinese, according to Fortune's reporting.

Ya Lily's videos, one of which shows an AI-generated man on a beach struggling to wipe dirt off his skin before a woman appears with a bath mitt to sell a shower scrubber, are low-effort AI content. Every post links back to random Temu products.

Despite the account almost certainly being fake, her content ran in roughly 109,541 Temu ad campaigns over the 16-month period, about 225 campaigns a day, and was viewed more than 1 billion times across both platforms, per ORL's data.

Nobody's Answering Questions

Neither Temu nor the account behind Ya Lily responded to multiple requests for comment from Fortune. Meta declined to comment when reached.

That silence matters. It's not clear whether Temu is knowingly running ads through fabricated personas to manufacture the appearance of organic buzz, or whether the company is itself getting fleeced by scammers gaming its ad-partnership system. Fortune's reporting doesn't resolve which it is, and no regulator has opened an investigation or filed a complaint as of this writing.

A fair-minded defender of Temu might point out that automated ad-bidding platforms like Meta's don't require human vetting of every partner account, and that AI-generated content has exploded across social media broadly, not just in Chinese e-commerce marketing. Distinguishing a real micro-influencer from a bot-run account isn't always obvious, and it's possible Temu's marketing team believed it was buying reach through legitimate creators.

But that defense runs into a legal problem. European Union law prohibits misleading advertising formats, and using fabricated personas to simulate authentic product endorsement is precisely the kind of practice that law targets. If Temu knew, or should have known, that dozens of its top-performing "creators" don't exist, that's a real exposure question for regulators in Brussels and London, not just a marketing embarrassment.

Meta's Cut

ORL's estimate isn't just about Temu. The group calculates that Temu alone accounts for nearly 2% of all the ad revenue Meta pulls in from Europe in any given quarter. Fortune had two independent social media advertising experts review ORL's methodology and estimates; both told the outlet the numbers were plausible.

That means Meta has a direct financial stake in exactly the kind of ad volume ORL is flagging. A platform earning close to 2% of its European revenue from one advertiser has limited incentive to scrutinize that advertiser's creator network too aggressively, though nothing in the available reporting shows Meta has ignored a specific complaint or been asked to act.

PressBee's and MSNBC's coverage of this story track Fortune's original reporting almost word for word, down to the same quotes and figures, rather than offering independent verification.

What happens next is an open question. No EU consumer-protection agency or UK regulator has announced a formal inquiry into Temu's ad practices tied to this specific research. Whether Brussels treats fabricated-influencer marketing as a priority enforcement target, or whether this becomes another case where Chinese e-commerce platforms outrun Western regulatory reflexes, remains to be seen.