I think the poster is referring to "Brand Indicators for Message Identification[1]". A new(ish) protocol to display branded avatars for messages in email clients.
Yes. We’ve had black-and-white low-resolution images in emails using the X-Face header since basically forever, and the Face header (allowing color a image) since 2005. The whole deal with BIMI is, purportedly, that the logo shown can be relied upon to not be faked, since each sender gets issued a (very expensive) certificate to sign e-mails with that logo. This certification (incidentally issued by all the old X.509 certificate issuers, whose business model imploded by free certificates from Let’s Encrypt and others) are reportedly based on verification of (visual) trademarks. But if, as in the linked article, different companies can have the same logo even if their name is the same and they are in the same country, then the supposed security of the BIMI logo is an obvious scam.
