In early 2025, H&M announced it was creating digital twins of 30 real models, in partnership with Swedish firm Uncut. The reaction covered job displacement, consent gaps, and the usual range of AI anxiety. What got less attention was what the models themselves said: that the process was professional, collaborative, and transparent.

Model Vanessa Moody, one of the 30, described it that way. H&M selected the models directly. It was a closed program: models could not apply, and their digital twins were used exclusively within H&M's campaigns. The program raised a question the industry had been circling without answering: what is the right structure for AI-generated imagery of a real person's likeness, and who controls it?

What a digital twin is

A digital twin is a trained AI model built from photographs of a real person. It learns their face, body, and appearance well enough to generate new images of them placed in different settings, wearing different garments, under different lighting. The twin is a generative model. The images it produces are static. What a brand receives at the end of a booking is a set of campaign-ready photographs, not the twin itself.

Because a digital twin generates new images of a real, identifiable person rather than reproducing existing ones, the consent and licensing structure around it is a different conversation from standard model photography.

How brands have used real models' likeness without consent

The legal and regulatory pressure around AI likeness did not come only from industry debate. In 2024, New York model Francheska Pujols did an authorized photoshoot for retailer Rainbow Shops, photographed in neutral poses against a plain white background. After her contract expired, Rainbow used AI to generate entirely different images, placing her likeness in sexualized settings and poses she had not approved. Pujols filed suit against Rainbow Shops in May 2026, and refiled in June after private settlement talks failed.

Her case is not isolated. The Fashion Workers Act, in effect in New York since June 2025, requires explicit and documented consent before a brand can use AI-generated imagery of a real person's likeness commercially.

Synthetic models versus digital twins

The industry has split into two approaches. Synthetic models are fully AI-generated: computer-created figures with no real person behind them, owned entirely by the brand. Guess featured a fully synthetic AI model in Vogue's August 2025 issue. These images face consistent public pushback, not only from labor advocates and model unions but from consumers, because they bypass real people entirely: no consent involved because no person exists, and no earnings going to anyone.

Digital twins are different. They are based on real people who agreed to participate. The model exists, has a face and a career, and can in principle negotiate the terms under which their likeness is used. The criticism of digital twin programs has focused on the cases where those terms were not actually in the model's hands: closed programs where one brand controls the twin and the model cannot license their likeness elsewhere through it.

What likeness licensing means for models

Your likeness in a legal and commercial sense includes your face, your body, and the visual characteristics that make you identifiable. Licensing your likeness for AI fashion imagery means granting a brand the right to generate images of you for a specific project, within channels and a timeframe you agreed to in advance. It is not a transfer of ownership. Each license is bounded to the project and expires when those terms end.

The model gets compensated for each approved use of their digital twin. The difference from a traditional booking is that the model does not have to be on set, and a brand can generate across a full catalog within the license window rather than being limited to a single shoot day.

How models license their likeness on Mirror Mirror AI

Mirror Mirror AI is a marketplace between brands and models for licensing real model likeness for AI-generated content. Models apply, build their digital twin, and set the terms under which brands can book them: the categories of work they accept, the channels, and their rate. Each booking goes through for approval before anything generates. Payment clears per approved project.

A model's digital twin is not locked to one brand. They can take bookings from any brand on the platform, across projects, with a documented license on each one.

Apply to create your digital twin

Models can apply to join the marketplace and license their likeness on their own terms. Apply to create your digital twin, or read how models earn by licensing an AI digital twin.

AI Fashion Models and Likeness Licensing