A Sex Doll Stole My Identity

Yael Cohen is five-seven with chestnut hair and a Mediterranean complexion. She’s also five-four, blonde and with soft white skin. Sometimes she’s five-11, dark-haired and black. Your very own Yael is available to order, in any configuration you like, as long as you have the money.

Only one of those combinations describes the living, breathing Yael Cohen—a popular Instagrammer from Israel. Now 23 years old, she just completed four years of mandatory military service, during which she worked as a software engineer. Like many people her age, Cohen enjoys posting attractive pictures of herself on Instagram. She’s worked hard to build a following and enjoys interacting with her fans. As Cohen tells it, she decided to take ownership of her image and her right to feel sexy. This is the internet, of course, so some sexual objectification is unavoidable, but few could have predicted how literal that would be for Cohen.

About a year ago, Cohen received a message from one of her followers. It linked to a forum about sex dolls. When she clicked it, she was met with an eerily familiar face: hers. The thread was started by the doll’s maker, and it described a new “model” of head coming soon; this one was a rough prototype. Cohen brushed it off as a coincidence.

Months later, she received another DM. This time there was no mistaking it—the link showed the final doll. Although its likeness to Cohen is subjective, its inspiration is not. It shares her first name and in some pictures sports an ombré wig similar to one Cohen sometimes uses in her posts. In case there was any doubt, the doll’s creator proudly explained, “Yael is inspired by this beautiful lady,” with links to several of Cohen’s Instagram pictures. “How will she satisfy your great fantasy?” he asked. The forum users subsequently explained just how.

The discovery sent Cohen into a spin. Being a woman online already comes with harsh realities, something Cohen and anyone else who identifies as female knows all too well. Being popular on Instagram only raises the stakes—but someone using your face to make a sex doll, with a choice of bodies and a functioning vagina, isn’t usually one of them.

“I’m confident with my own body, and I also like to share my thoughts, my points of view, my beliefs,” Cohen tells Playboy. “But it’s something that nobody teaches you how to react to. After the first shock, I started feeling some complex feelings.”

“Complex” is likely an understatement. It’s a big leap from typical entitled Instagram comments about how fuckable you are to discovering a physical clone that is, well, actually fuckable.

In the past few years, what it means to be objectified online has shifted dramatically, with the standards for exploitation being dismantled and rebuilt in incomprehensible ways.

Around the end of 2017, Deepfakes emerged. These AI-generated videos could superimpose anyone’s face over anyone else’s. Needless to say, the technology soon found a spiritual home in porn. Before long, subreddits spilled over with fake Emma Watson and Gal Gadot videos. Look-alike porn actors or run-of-the-mill Photoshops suddenly seemed quaint; you could simply feed an app some images and humiliate women that way instead. In fact, DeepNude, an app that spat out naked images with any face you fed it, served up only female bodies.

Deepfakes may be realistic, but they’re virtual. They may live online forever, but they’ll soon be replaced with the next “it’s just a bit of fun” attack on female privacy. While the personal impact of Deepfakes is not to be dismissed, they’re still a visual extension of the male fantasy—a turn-on that you must eventually turn off.

Cohen knows that anyone who buys “Yael” can do whatever they want to her, whenever they want, and there’s no DMCA takedown service to stop it. “If I wanted to have nudes, I would have nudes,” she says. “If I wanted to have a sex doll, I would have a sex doll. They took my choice away. It’s sort of forcing me to show my body naked.”

Owners of these dolls frequently share their exploits on the forums. Sexual activity is usually only implied, bar the odd discussion about the merits of a built-in versus a removable vagina or about accurate anus placement. The bulk of what owners share is painfully pedestrian. Photosets depict Yael shopping or maybe enjoying a day in the garden. Sometimes these innocent scenarios seem more invasive—as though someone took a piece of Cohen’s soul and forced her to live with them.

Sex dolls made in the likeness of real people aren’t new. The difference here is that Cohen isn’t a porn star, she was never approached by the company, she never gave her consent, and she receives precisely nothing from any sales.

Jade Stanley, founder of the U.K.-based sexdollofficial.com, specializes in bespoke creations but also offers licensed porn-star dolls. “I’m actually the only company in the world that offers the service that I do,” she says. “I know you’ve got RealDoll in the States and everything, but they still do not do what I do. I can replicate anything.”

Each time someone buys one of Stanley’s licensed dolls, the performer can expect around $500 (though her dolls are more expensive than those of the company that makes “Yael”). Cohen’s reaction to this is as you’d expect: “Wow, that means if I actually had that, I would be very rich right now.” She’d noted that “Yael” had been in the company’s best-seller spot for weeks. But it isn’t the money that bothers her; it’s the loss of control. And when you’re trying to carve out a career based on your personal brand, control is everything.

Stanley also highlights a side of the business that rarely makes the headlines: “The majority of my [bespoke] customers are people who suffer with anxiety or loneliness issues. It’s probably one of the things that most shocked me about this business when I first got into it.”

Too often we think of the carnal side and forget that, ultimately, we’re all human (except the dolls). When Stanley tells me this, I reconsider the more innocent interactions I’ve seen on the forum. None of it seems malicious or evil—it’s almost sweet. The owners probably haven’t considered that somewhere the real Yael is feeling violated. But that doesn’t make it okay.

When I tell Stanley about Cohen, she’s appalled, saying it’s not uncommon for individuals to ask for dolls based on real people, but usually it’s an amalgamation—Ariana Grande’s eyes, Kiera Knightley’s nose, that kind of thing. It’s like a modern-day version of Weird Science, where clients program their perfect woman into a computer and out pops Kelly LeBrock. But these are one-offs, not for mass production.

Adult performers have long endorsed specific body-part replicas too. You can buy Fleshlights cast from the private parts of dozens of adult performers. Misty Stone tells me she has all three of her orifices available for purchase—and a full doll made in her likeness. For her, it’s a lucrative second income.

“When I first started with Fleshlight, those checks were fucking amazing,” Stone says. “I get $12,000, $10,000, $6,000 here, $8,000 there. There are so many girls who have them, you know; you want to get your fans to buy yours. So you just promote, promote, promote on your social media, and you make good money back.”

Ironically, that point is not lost on Cohen. “I feel in some way I’m helping them sell it because it’s my name. People buy it because it’s me, because it’s attached to my photos.” Salt, meet wound. Not only was her likeness taken, but the doll has her name and is directly linked to her. It has built-in marketing, all for the sweet price of zero dollars.

Of course there’s a robust legal system in place to stop this, right? Well, no, not really. When Cohen first sought legal advice, a lawyer told her she simply wasn’t famous enough. Fortunately, it turns out even us regular folks do have rights.

“What most lawyers would instantly jump on here is what’s called ‘the right of publicity,’” says Jonathan Steinsapir, a partner at KWIKA law firm. He should know: He represented Kendall Jenner when Cutera cosmetics allegedly used images of her to promote its products without her permission.

According to Steinsapir, most U.S. states recognize a right of publicity. If any Yael dolls are sold in those states, Cohen would have a claim. One high-profile example of the right of publicity is when Taster’s Choice used a handsome male countenance on some of its labels. The plaintiff, Russell Christoff, was originally paid a trivial sum for a photo shoot with a clause stating that if his image was used in marketing, he’d be further compensated. Nestlé, owner of the Taster’s Choice brand at the time, used the image again, without telling him, and paid the price. The jury initially awarded Cristoff $15 million. The final sum he received is not known.

I don’t know about you, but a coffee container seems less of a personal invasion than an anatomically accurate sex doll in your likeness. Steinsapir agrees.

“If she has not consented to allow her image to be used for a sex doll, it’s just offensive,” he says. “She’d have a very good claim under most states’ laws for violation of her rights to publicity. It would also entitle her to punitive damages, which can multiply your actual damages by anywhere up to 10 times. So this could be a multimillion-dollar case.”

Unfortunately, the company that makes the Yael doll is based in China, where concepts of intellectual property are very different. Enforcing a U.S. judgment internationally is not impossible, but sometimes it might as well be. Still, the doll is sold in the U.S., so the potential is there.

Sometimes the most important judgment is one that hits a little closer to home. I ask Cohen what her mother thinks about all this. “It took me a couple of weeks to tell her,” she says. “I needed to find the perfect timing and the courage to do it.” When Cohen eventually took her aside, her mother was surprised but supportive. “Of course, she’d rather I stayed as a software engineer and not be on Instagram, but they love me for me.”

When I reach out to the company that makes the doll, it doesn’t immediately respond. I ask Cohen what one thing she would tell the company if she could.

“I honestly just want to know why,” she replies. “Why did you do that?”

We may never know the answer. Neither Stanley nor Stone, both women in this industry, had ever heard of something like this beyond trivial cases like a blow-up doll that was sorta-kinda based on Miley Cyrus. Even that was more of a knock-off Halloween costume than an actual likeness.

One thing’s for sure: This will happen again. The same manufacturer is already working on a doll based on actress and social media star Liza Soberano, which it flaunted on the same forum as it did “Yael.”

It’s hard to blame the customers. We don’t know their motivations, and many won’t ever know the doll they bought is based on a real person. And there will always be the victim blamers who say things like “Well, what did you expect? You’re a public-facing woman on the internet”—an outdated view that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon.

As for the company behind the doll? It changed the wording of its initial forum post once it caught wind that Cohen knew about it. She also suspects some of the defensive comments about the doll on her Instagram post were from employees. Who knows how many of the company’s dolls are based on unsuspecting women?

In the meantime, Cohen hopes to get back to her normal life, without the specter of her silicone sister looming over her.

“I just want to keep working on the things I love,” she says, “reach people and influence them, promoting my beliefs and ideas and hopefully making the world a better place.”