Fashion’s AI model contracts put digital clones and consent in focus
Fashion brands are seeking AI image rights in model contracts, while digital replicas raise questions about consent, payment and future work.
Fashion's use of artificial intelligence is changing more than how advertising images are produced. It is also changing the rights some photo-shoot contracts seek over a model's face, body and future digital likeness.
A Reuters investigation published on October 27 found proposed terms covering face and body alterations, reusable digital clones and the use of model images to train AI. The documents were unsigned proposals, an important distinction from evidence that every named brand has adopted or exercised those rights.
Proposed terms extend beyond a single shoot
Reuters interviewed 15 model-agency directors and reviewed more than a dozen confidential photo-shoot contracts involving brands including Diesel, Calvin Klein and L'Oreal. The proposals point to a commercial question: whether payment for one assignment also buys permission for later AI-generated uses.
The companies' responses were not identical. Diesel parent OTB said a reviewed release was specific to one campaign and not typical. Calvin Klein said it was testing AI with regulation and model rights in mind. Reale Actives said it uses real models and had not replicated a model with AI, attributing reviewed language to an unnamed production partner.
AI production is already a commercial service
About You's Scayle Studios told Reuters it had 130 brand clients and had generated 190,000 outfits in the previous month. It promised production-cost reductions of more than 90%; that is the service provider's claim, not an independently established saving for every customer.
Mango offers a documented example of the production process. For its earlier Sunset Dream campaign for Mango Teen, the company said teams photographed real garments, trained a generative model using those images, then selected, retouched and edited the generated campaign pictures. The archive image accompanying this article comes from that campaign, rather than a new 2026 shoot.
Consent is not automatically reusable
New York Department of Labor guidance on the Fashion Workers Act requires separate, explicit written consent for a model's digital replica, setting out its scope, purpose, compensation and duration. Approval for one use does not automatically authorize a new campaign.
Those requirements are specific to the New York framework, not a description of a single worldwide rule. For models and agencies, the practical issue is whether AI rights are clearly limited and separately agreed, rather than hidden inside a broad image release.
Sources
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