Who is Derek Mercer, the bodybuilder?
Derek Mercer is an AI-generated bodybuilder on Instagram, @derek.mercer.2006. Long hair, impossible muscles, gym-bro captions, and a coin in the bio.
He is the smallest of the Jean Phil copycats: about 1,200 followers on Sep 25, per Dexerto. Same formula, different gym.
Searches for Derek Mercer also turn up a singer with the same name. This page is about the AI bodybuilder on Instagram.
Is the Derek Mercer bodybuilder real?
No. The Derek Mercer bodybuilder is an AI character. Dexerto, Cointribune, The Tab and EarlyGame list him with Jean Phil and Archibald Brown as AI personas with memecoins.
The body is the giveaway. Proportions no gym produces, the same face in every clip, and no life outside the posts.
The Derek Mercer coin ($DRMR)
$DRMR is the memecoin linked to Derek Mercer. It was worth about $74K, per Dexerto and Cointribune.
Small next to $JEANPHIL, which peaked at $12.2M.
Derek Mercer and the other AI characters
Derek Mercer is one of four big names in the Sep 2026 wave.
How to make an AI character like Derek Mercer
Design the character once as a reference sheet, generate a base clip, then swap your character into it. The sheet is what keeps the face the same from clip to clip, which is the whole trick behind Derek Mercer.
Write the character sheet in ChatGPT
One original character: front, three-quarter and walking profile on one plain background, same lighting and scale in every view. Give it a name, a silhouette you can read at thumbnail size, and one prop or bit it always does. Jean Phil has the bob, the moustache and the shadowboxing. That is the brief.
Crumb, an original character, as a reference sheet made in ChatGPT. Generate a base clip in Seedance
Prompt the action and the setting, not the face: "man in a houndstooth suit shadowboxing on a Paris street, handheld, 9:16". Five to ten seconds is plenty. Generate a few and keep the one with the best motion.Swap your character in
Feed the base clip and the character sheet to Seedance's character reference and let it replace the subject. Same motion, your face. Check the hands and the hairline before you keep it.Post the same character every week
One clip is a meme. The same character in a new setting every week is a mascot. The recognition compounds.
The full walkthrough, with the exact ChatGPT prompts, three original reference sheets and the Seedance swap request, is in how to make an AI mascot. Why the wave works in ads is in AI commercials got weird. What each clip tool costs per finished ad is in AI video tools for ads, and Seedance against Kling is in Kling vs Seedance.
More weird AI characters
Frequently asked questions
Is Derek Mercer the bodybuilder real?
No. The Derek Mercer bodybuilder on Instagram (@derek.mercer.2006) is an AI-generated character.
Does Derek Mercer have a coin?
Yes, $DRMR, worth about $74K per Dexerto and Cointribune in late Sep 2026.
Want a recurring character in your ads every week?
Director by Sprites is a full creative team for your ads. Every Monday you get finished, on-brand video ads, reviewed by a human, with your own character in them. You pick the winners. Sprites ships the campaigns.