- Last updated
- 13 October 2026
- Nature
- AI persona
- Niche
- Fashion
- Style
- Photorealistic
- Debut
- 2018
- Origin
- Tokyo, Japan
- Created by
- Aww Inc.
Summary
imma is Japan's first virtual model, instantly recognisable by her signature pink bob and built to look real. Developed by the virtual human company Aww Inc. in Tokyo, she appeared on Instagram in 2018 and has worked as a fashion model and producer, collaborating with brands including Burberry, COACH, BAPE, IKEA, Porsche, Dior and Valentino. She appeared in the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Paralympic Games in 2021, was named in a Forbes Women list in Poland's Women of the Year 2020, and was selected as one of Japan Economic Entertainment's New 100 Talent To Watch. Her feeds read like a real person's, with outfits, art-museum visits and talk about her own identity under #ithinkimcgi, and she runs her own fashion brand, Astral Body.
Is imma AI?
Yes. imma is a computer-generated virtual model created in 2018 by Koichi Kishimoto and Takayuki Moriya and run by their Tokyo company Aww Inc.; no real person is named as her.
The people who make imma say so themselves. Aww's own page calls her "Japan's first virtual model". In a ZOZO fashion tech news interview with Aww's CEO Takayuki Moriya, she is introduced as "a computer-generated non-existent model". WIPO Magazine names her creators as Moriya and Koichi Kishimoto, a computer graphics expert whose studio Modeling Cafe makes CG and visual effects for films and games, and calls her Asia's first virtual human. Her creators have said all this openly from the start, so the answer is clear.
One point of wording: imma is a CG character, made by a graphics studio, and started before today's generative AI tools. Aww told ZOZO about a 2024 partnership with NVIDIA and said it aims to "evolve VH fused with AI". So she is a synthetic, non-existent person, but she began as handmade computer graphics, not as an image generator's output.
What the pages do not say is how each picture is made: whether her face is laid over photographs or footage of real people, and who writes her posts and captions. No page names a model, actor or voice behind her, and none says a human performs her. That is why the verdict is a plain yes, not partly.
Evidence
In ZOZO's fashion tech news interview with Aww CEO Takayuki Moriya, imma is introduced as a computer-generated non-existent model developed by the virtual human company Aww.
fashiontechnews.zozo.comWIPO Magazine says Koichi Kishimoto, a CG expert whose studio Modeling Cafe makes CG and visual effects, and Takayuki Moriya created imma in 2018 and calls her Asia's first virtual human.
wipo.intAww's own profile page for imma calls her Japan's first virtual model, recognisable by her pink bob but "not easy to tell she is virtual".
aww.tokyoIn the same ZOZO interview, Aww says it partnered with NVIDIA in June 2024 and aims to use NVIDIA's AI technology to fuse its virtual humans with AI.
fashiontechnews.zozo.com
Assessed 9 October 2026
YouTube
Long-form work
Audience over time
How their audience has moved
Followers · all platforms
1.4M
▼ 66 (−0.0%) since 9 Oct 2026
Facebook 456k · TikTok 445k · Instagram 378k · Threads 76k · X 13k · YouTube 579
Added up from 9 Oct 2026, once every platform had been read; tracked since 5 Oct 2026. Each platform is read about once a week.
TikTok