Janky

Every page that speaks to it agrees that Janky is a fictional character, not a human. Virtualhumans.org lists him as owned by Superplastic, which it calls a creator of animated synthetic celebrities. CreatorDB says he is a fully animated virtual influencer and not a human being. Fast Company Middle East describes him as a mischievous cat-looking creature, one of the synthetic celebrities Superplastic's founder Paul Budnitz set out to make famous on social media instead of selling them to a TV studio. He began in 2018 as a vinyl art toy co-designed with Huck Gee.

The word AI needs care here. Janky is computer-generated in the sense that he is an animated digital character, but none of these pages says his posts are made with generative AI. Fast Company reports that a team of 50 human artists at Superplastic sits behind the characters' creative decisions, and Budnitz credits the human element with keeping them alive. That makes him a studio-made character, like a cartoon, rather than a person using a filter.

What is not known: no page names who voices Janky in his videos, who writes his posts day to day, or which tools the studio uses to animate him. No platform AI label was recorded on his accounts.