A model who has previously worked with the Pakistani fashion brand Engine Pakistan has gone public with a claim that the company is using AI-generated images of her face to promote a new collection she was never photographed for and never agreed to appear in.
In an Instagram post, Ayesha Tahir said the visuals currently being used by Engine Pakistan feature her likeness but are entirely AI-generated. She did not participate in any shoot for the collection and was not asked for permission before the images were created or published. The visuals are not limited to organic social media posts. They are also being run as paid advertisements.
Tahir said she attempted to resolve the matter privately by reaching out to the brand first but did not receive a response, prompting her to speak publicly.
“Using someone’s face through AI without their permission is not okay, in any situation,” she wrote. “Consent should always come first, whether the content is real or digitally created.”
She then went on to share the doctored images in her Instagram post:
Following the public attention generated by Tahir’s post, Engine removed the AI-generated images from its platforms. Tahir later confirmed the takedown in an update, though the brand has not issued a public statement addressing how the images were created or why they were used without her consent in the first place.
Cases like these are not isolated ones, as they show a growing tension in Pakistan’s fashion and advertising industry as AI image generation tools become more accessible. Brands can now produce photorealistic campaign visuals without booking a studio, hiring a photographer, or scheduling a model. But the technology also makes it trivially easy to use someone’s likeness without involving them at all, raising questions about consent, intellectual property, and the commercial exploitation of a person’s face.
A face is a professional asset. When a brand can generate campaign imagery using AI without booking or paying the person whose likeness appears in it, it undermines both the economic relationship between talent and brands and the basic principle that individuals control how their image is used commercially.
The legal landscape around AI-generated likenesses remains largely undefined in Pakistan. There is no specific legislation governing the use of a person’s face in AI-generated commercial content, and existing intellectual property and privacy frameworks were not written with generative AI in mind. In markets where these issues have been litigated, such as the United States, courts have increasingly recognized a “right of publicity” that protects individuals from unauthorized commercial use of their likeness, but enforcement remains inconsistent even there.
Tahir later confirmed that the brand removed her images. However, the fact that Engine removed the images only after public pressure, not after Tahir’s private outreach, is a stark reality about how little recourse individuals currently have when their likeness is used without permission in AI-generated content.
Tahir said she hopes the matter sets a precedent and emphasized that her concern extends beyond a single brand to the broader principle that consent should be non-negotiable regardless of whether content is photographed or digitally generated.
