Meta is facing renewed privacy scrutiny after launching Muse Image, an AI image-generation tool that can pull from public Instagram photos, including profile pictures, unless users manually opt out. The company unveiled Muse Image on July 7 as the first image-generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs, positioning it as a creative tool available inside Meta AI for generating images from prompts, blending multiple photos, and sharing results across chats, stories, and feeds.
The criticism centers on Muse Image's mentioned capability, which lets users tag and pull in photos to include in AI-generated creations. The public Instagram accounts are reportedly opted in by default, this means one user could generate AI images using another person's public posts, reels, or profile picture without that person's direct involvement unless they've gone into settings and manually disabled reuse.
Reports indicate account holders aren't notified when their content gets used this way, and opting out only prevents future use, it doesn't remove AI-generated images that may have already been created from a person's public photos.
For Instagram users wanting to block this reuse, the control sits inside the Instagram app under Settings, in the "Sharing and reuse" section. Switching an account to private also prevents public content from being pulled into Muse Image creations by other users. It's worth noting this control is narrower than it might first appear, disabling reuse for Muse Image is a separate setting from opting out of Meta's broader AI model training, which may fall under different privacy controls and vary depending on local data protection regulations.
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The controversy adds to an ongoing debate about how Meta uses public content captions, comments, photos, and videos across its platforms to train and improve its AI systems, with users in some regions able to formally object through platform settings or privacy request forms.
Meta has framed Muse Image primarily as a consumer creativity tool, useful for designing invitations, editing pictures, and generating personalized content for social sharing, and says the underlying model will expand to power creative features on WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, and advertiser tools through Meta Advantage+ creative.
In markets like India, where personal images, public platform data, and consent requirements intersect, the rollout could draw closer regulatory attention as the tool reaches more users.