Yael Cohen Aris, a 25-year old Instagram model from Israel, has recently alleged that a Chinese sex doll company used her likeness without her consent.
During her appearance on ITV’s This Morning show this week via a video link from Israel, Aris explained that she became aware of the sex doll, which was apparently even named after her, when she got tipped off by one of her social media followers.
"I don't have anything against the sex doll industry but the problem is they did it without my consent and without my knowledge,” she said when asked about her feelings regarding the matter at hand. "Also it's double wrong because it's connected to my identity. It's not just a doll that looks like me or is inspired by me - they never hid the fact it was developed from me."
Yael shared her discovery with her followers back in July 2019 on Instagram; she complained about a “big company” making a “sex doll about me without my permission or me knowing.”
“No it's not a joke, It's real. They even named the doll ‘Yael,'" she wrote in that post. “I am still shocked. don't really know what to do.”
While on the show, Yael also remarked that she would not agree to simply receive a percentage of the doll’s sales, if such an offer were made to her, insisting that “first of all it should get off the shelves and then maybe we could talk about how things went wrong and why.”
"I'm not talking about compensation, I think learning a lesson from this would be the best thing to come out of this story," she added.
The show’s hosts noted that they made attempts to contact the doll’s manufacturer, a Chinese company called Irontech, but did not get a response.