Rainbow warned its models that AI meant fewer jobs. Then their doppelgängers appeared. -…

Fashion models working for the retailer Rainbow faced a wave of uncertainty after being warned in June 2024 that the company would be increasing its use of AI and that fewer human staff would be needed long-term. As the company integrated AI tools into its e-commerce workflow, models reported a significant decline in bookings, followed by the appearance of synthetic imagery that appeared to mimic their likenesses.

What happened

The transition began with an email from Rainbow's studio manager, Phil Caraway, notifying models that the company was styling products and generating avatars using AI. Following this communication, models observed employees using a program called Lica to generate synthetic avatars from flat-lay clothing photos. By March 2025, the human models noticed marketing images on Rainbow's website and social media that featured figures bearing their own facial features and physical builds, but posed in positions they had never performed during their actual photo shoots.

These doppelgängers appeared in various locations and poses, including sexualized positions that the models claimed they never authorized. While Rainbow's contracts contained broad language allowing the company to use images in "composite or distorted" forms, model Francheska Pujols filed a lawsuit on May 22, 2025, arguing that the contract did not permit the creation of entirely new images, scenes, or poses that did not originate from the original content. The models noted inconsistencies in these images, such as altered skin tones and changes to facial features like nose shape, fueling suspicions that their likenesses were being manipulated by generative AI. Rainbow’s chief digital officer, David Cost, stated that the company evaluates AI technologies responsibly and operates in accordance with its contractual commitments, though he declined to address specific questions regarding the creation of the doppelgängers.