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Fashion retailer Rainbow warns models of job cuts due to AI expansion
Trending · Score 63
1 min readUpdated Jun 28, 2026
Drafted by AI, reviewed by the Ajako Taja Editorial Team · How we use AI

AI Summary

Fashion retailer Rainbow told models to expect job losses as it moved toward AI; now, those same workers report seeing digital doppelgängers of themselves in company campaigns.

  • Rainbow informed fashion models in June 2023 that internal AI use would increase significantly, leading to a reduced demand for human staff.
  • Business Insider reported that some models subsequently discovered digital replicas or 'doppelgängers' of themselves appearing in company marketing materials.
  • The extent to which these AI-generated images were created using the models' own likenesses versus generic training data remains a subject of legal and ethical debate.

Fashion retailer Rainbow notified its models last year that the company planned to scale back personnel as it integrated AI into its creative workflows. This move comes as the fashion industry increasingly experiments with synthetic imagery to reduce production costs. However, workers have since reported finding digital likenesses of themselves, raising questions about data usage and intellectual property rights. Whether these actions trigger formal regulatory action or labor disputes will depend on how the industry manages the balance between automation and individual image rights.

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