If you are a model and a brand photographs you against a plain white backdrop for a catalog shoot, you probably assume you know what happens to those pictures next. Francheska Pujols assumed the same thing. She did a routine 2024 photoshoot for the budget retailer Rainbow Shops, then went home. What came back, months later, was a version of herself she had never posed for: seated on a barstool with a cocktail between her legs, reclined in another model's lap, her face grafted onto scenes and poses that never happened. She sued. She withdrew the suit to settle privately. The settlement failed. She sued again. That refiling, and what it says about the state of the law protecting models, designers, and other creators from unauthorized AI use of their likeness, is today's lead story.

The claim

Pujols originally filed against Rainbow USA, Inc. on May 22 in New York State Supreme Court, accusing the retailer of photographing her against a plain background and then using AI to generate entirely different images, some of which she called crude and damaging to her reputation as a professional model. She withdrew that suit a week later, on May 29, so the parties could pursue a private settlement. When those talks failed, her lawyer, Richard Altman, refiled the case at New York State Supreme Court on June 15, stating plainly in an affidavit that the parties were unable to resolve the matter and were refiling the claims. The refiled complaint reiterates that Pujols did do a 2024 photoshoot for Rainbow, but never consented to her likeness being used in the AI-generated ads that followed, and adds a new piece of evidence: an Instagram post from an account called Kiss Don't Tell, showing a figure resembling Pujols in a pose exposing her undergarments, wearing the same outfit from her Rainbow shoot, with the two brands sharing the same social media manager listed on LinkedIn. Pujols says she never posed for, approved, or authorized any such depiction.

Why it matters

The contract at the center of this case allowed Rainbow to make minor edits to Pujols's photos. It said nothing about generating new scenes, new poses, or new settings that never existed. That single gap, a contract drafted before generative AI was a routine tool in commercial photography, is the same gap sitting in most modeling releases, brand ambassador agreements, and independent designer lookbook contracts right now. Pujols also says she still does not know the full extent of Rainbow's use of her likeness, including whether it has been shared with the company's affiliates, third-party vendors, or other AI systems. That uncertainty is not a rhetorical flourish. It is the practical reality for anyone whose image has been licensed under old-style language and then fed into tools nobody anticipated when the contract was signed. The refiling also lands squarely inside New York's regulatory shift. The state's Fashion Workers Act, in effect for a year now, prohibits model management companies from creating or altering a model's digital likeness through AI without clear, conspicuous, and separate written consent, and as of June 19 requires modeling agencies operating in New York to register under the law.

What to watch

Rainbow has consistently denied wrongdoing, telling reporters earlier this year that it used its images properly and that there is no violation of Pujols's rights. The company has not yet responded publicly to the refiled complaint, and no court has ruled on the merits. This is not a decided case. It is a live one, and its outcome will turn heavily on how a New York court reads that word, minor, against what generative AI can now do with a handful of source photographs. Independent designers and models should also watch a parallel case out of California, where the influencer Molly Tranchin sued the intimates brand EBY in federal court after it allegedly posted an AI-altered version of her content that exposed her without consent, despite a contract that gave her approval rights over any edits. Two different plaintiffs, two different states, the same underlying failure: contracts written for a world of photo retouching, applied to a world of image generation. If you have a contract on your desk right now that mentions AI only in passing, or not at all, this is the week to fix that, not the week after your images turn up somewhere you never agreed to be.

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