From the 5e PHB:
Three illusory duplicates of yourself appear in your space. Until the spell ends, the duplicates move with you and mimic your actions, shifting position so it’s impossible to track which image is real. You can use your action to dismiss the illusory duplicates."
So yeah, it does create images. The spell explicitly calls them out as separate AND calls them images. What it does not say anywhere, is that it's some sort of change in appearance. Feel free to play it that way if you want to, but that's not what the spell does as written.
As further proof that these are separate images that are targeted or not, the following is said:
"Each time a creature targets you with an attack during the spell’s duration, roll a d20 to determine whether the attack instead targets one of your duplicates."
This is not some sort of miss chance like blur, but rather the person doing the targeting being fooled by the spell into targeting the image. That's the function of the spell. To fool people into believing one of the images is you and getting you to target it instead. Magic Missile is not a god. It's a freaking 1st level spell. It shouldn't be better at figuring out which image is real than the genius(presumably) wizard who cast it.
So yes, while magic missile is not explicitly an attack, it does require the caster to know the target. If a caster of a magic missile can unerringly know which image the real, then so can a melee attacker. If a melee attacker can be fooled into aiming at a different target, then so can a magic missile caster.