Always wondered but never thought to ask.

Pretty sure it was a play on the girl silhouettes you would see on rubber truck mud flaps. Might be totally misremembering it though.

Carmella Splosh
Our mascot is named Carmella, a marriage of the sticky wam substance and the site's philosophy of karma. The logo is based on the traditional mud flap girl, but with actual splotches of mud--or whatever substance you think it is. (They change color with the season.) Carmella transmits our laid-back approach to wam by lying back and relaxing. At larger scales, you can tell that Carmella is smartly clothed, has high heels, and hair did. If you squint, you can see the body forming the letters U.M.D.

Do you have the original artists permission to use their work to make an AI image?

Now there's an interesting thought. A while back I was in a Starbucks with the CEO of a client, we were talking about AI development. I'd taken a photo of the embossed logo cast into my cup (I think she's a mermaid?) and asked ChatGPT to show what she'd look like as a human. The result was impressive as a test of the tech. Didn't share or publish it anywhere, as I assume copyright in the logo or anything made from it belongs to Starbucks. But I wonder what would happen if you created an image of a person from something so non-human it would be impossible for anyone to tell where it came from?

I think we would get into AI inception. Creating an AI image and then asking AI to make an image of the AI LOL.

I thought logo was based of a potentially south East Asian lady pose, unless she did that pose because of logo? I didn't find umd till fall of 2000 so not sure what was going on before then ?

Good question