The companion episode — the full training plan.

Every week there’s a new “build an AI influencer for FREE” tutorial. They all teach the same recipe: a cloud tool for the face, a reference board for “consistency,” another tool to animate, a fourth for the voice — most of them “free” the way a free trial is free. We’ll build the same result better: on your own machine, actually free, actually private, and actually consistent — because the character is a trained identity, not a reference board.

Disclosure: hardware links below are affiliate links (Amazon Associate / referral) — no cost to you, and they keep every guide free. Full disclosure.

What an “AI influencer” actually is

One thing: a consistent character you can place in any scene — beach, desk, gym, runway — same face, a person you can direct. A mascot, a presenter, a face for a story. The whole craft lives or dies on that word: consistent.

The mistake everyone makes: the drifting board

The popular method generates one good face, builds a character board (a grid of that face), and feeds it back as a reference every time. It holds for a front-facing portrait in the same light. Then she turns her head, the light changes, you ask for a full body — and she drifts. The nose shifts, the jaw changes. It’s almost her, which your eye catches instantly.

The reason, in one line: a reference board is a suggestion, not an identity. You’re asking the model to please match this photo every time. It has no memory of who she is.

The fix: teach the face once (a LoRA)

Instead of showing the model a photo every time, you teach it the face once. That trained lesson is a LoRA — a small add-on that says, permanently, “this person exists, here’s exactly what she looks like.” Train once on your own GPU (a coffee or two), and from then on she’s known — summon her in any prompt, any angle, any outfit, any light, and it’s her. Baked into the model, not clipped to the side.

This single step is the difference between a character you own and a photo you keep waving around. → Train a Character LoRA is the full recipe.

Make her real: the raw-photo look

Even a perfect character reads as “AI” because of the skin — too smooth, poreless, plastic. Run the final image through a local upscaler that does two jobs: sharpen real detail (hairs, eyelashes, catch-lights) with a restorative model like SeedVR2, then a skin-detail pass (the 1x-ITF-SkinDiffDetail model) that adds back actual pores and texture. Blend it ~65% so it’s tasteful, not etched. Same face — now photographed, not rendered. Most people skip this. Don’t.

Free that stays free, private that stays private

The cloud “free” has a meter: daily credits, download caps, watermarks, and your character’s face on someone else’s servers. Local runs on your own graphics card — unlimited images, no credits, no caps, no watermark. And it’s architecturally private: there’s no server, no upload. Not “a company promises not to store it” — it never leaves your machine.

The honest catch: this needs a real GPU. If you’re on a phone or a weak laptop, that’s a wall — see which rig you actually need, and know that you can rent a GPU by the hour (~$1) and run this exact setup in the cloud to try before you build.

Give her life

A still character is a photo; an influencer moves. Hand your best image to a local video model and it animates a few seconds from that single frame — a breath, a smile, a turn. Add a local voice so she can speak, and a talking face if you want one. Face, voice, motion — all local, all yours.

The one rule

Build a character that’s yours. Not a real person — copying a real human’s face is theft, and often a crime. Make an original instead; it’s more fun anyway. Our presenter, Xellia, started as hand-drawn sketches 20 years ago, then years of video-game create-a-character screens, then thousands of prompts refining her, then the training. An idea only you have → a doodle → a game avatar → a trained identity. That’s the honest path.

And if you want her to earn? The honest lanes: digital products, guides, a face for a brand you’re building. Own an asset — don’t rent a liability.

Everything here is free and local. Start at askaillex.com, and bring your character to r/aillex.