When brands go live: AI host or profit-popularity driven influencer?

Livestreaming sales (LSS) has become one of the fastest-growing formats in digital commerce, yet rising commission rates render influencer-led livestreaming increasingly costly. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) now offer a promising alternative: AI-powered virtual hosts that engage consumers and promote products without commission payments, albeit with lower interactional efficiency. This paper examines the brand's strategic choice between influencer-led and AI-hosted LSS. We develop an analytical model involving a brand and a dual-purpose influencer who values both commission and popularity-related benefits such as follower-base expansion. Our analysis uncovers two opposing mechanisms shaping how cost dynamics affect livestreaming choices. The influencer interactional-compensation effect captures the influencer's tendency to raise interactional richness as product cost increases, thereby helping stabilise demand. In contrast, the AI price-stabilisation effect results in lower interactional investment but more stable pricing. We show that when the influencer cares only about commission earnings, AI hosting is optimal only for low-cost products. If the influencer is profit-popularity driven, however, AI hosting may remain profitable for mid-to-high-cost products when AI is inefficient and popularity incentive is strong. Our results highlight the importance of tailoring livestreaming mode with product cost structure and the moderating role of the influencer's profit-popularity motivation.