Meta has pulled the plug on a feature tied to its recently released AI image tool after users and industry groups raised serious concerns about how public Instagram photos were being used.
The company acted on Friday, just days after rolling out Muse Image — its first image-generation model built into the Meta AI assistant. Muse Image is the parent company’s debut tool for creating images through artificial intelligence, and it’s available through both Instagram and Facebook’s platform.
In a statement, Meta explained its original intentions while acknowledging the public pushback. “Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way,” the company said. “We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”
Like other AI tools capable of generating images, Muse Image produces visuals based on prompts entered by users. However, the feature also automatically pulled photos from all public Instagram accounts, making them available as references when the AI created new images — without requiring any action from account holders.
The revelation sparked a wave of posts across social media, with users flagging privacy worries and sharing step-by-step guides on how to opt out of having their Instagram content accessed by the tool.
The entertainment industry was among the quickest to respond. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists urged its members to update their Instagram privacy settings to safeguard their personal likeness from being used by the AI tool.
After Meta announced it was shutting down the feature, SAG-AFTRA posted a statement on X expressing its approval of the move. “With the dangers of nonconsensual digital replicas well known to all, a feature that encouraged that behavior is unwise,” the union wrote. “We appreciate its discontinuance. It is the right thing to do.”
