Meta has shut down a feature that let users generate AI images from other people’s Instagram content, just days after rolling it out.
The tool was part of Muse Image, an AI image generation feature Instagram’s parent company launched on Tuesday. Through the Meta AI chatbot, users could tag any public Instagram account and use that account’s content to generate AI altered images, without asking the account holder first.
Since public accounts were opted in automatically, anyone with one could have had their image used without knowing about it.
Backlash to the feature and its breach of privacy was swift. Meta responded by pulling the feature, saying that it had “missed the mark” and that the tool was “no longer available”.
Hollywood union Sag-Aftra (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) had earlier urged its members and “all Instagram users” to safeguard their likeness, saying there had been an “utter miscalculation of public sentiment regarding the obvious dangers and harms inherent in such use”. The union called Meta’s reversal a “win”.
Privacy International, a London based rights group, also weighed in, telling an international media outlet that the episode was “the latest sign AI companies see people’s images and data as raw material to be exploited”.
Meta defended its original intent while announcing the rollback. “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.”
Muse Image marked Meta’s first entry into AI image generation. When the company announced the tool, it said that the feature would stay limited to Instagram for now, though more AI tools and integrations were planned for WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger. An AI video tool is also in development at the company.
Meta did not offer any further comment when approached.
