Meta has withdrawn a newly launched artificial intelligence feature that let users create images from public Instagram accounts, following a storm of criticism from privacy advocates, a Hollywood union, and users who discovered they had been opted in by default.
The tool, part of the Muse Image model that Meta debuted last week, allowed the Meta AI chatbot to tag public-facing profiles and generate altered or fake images from their content. Within days, actors, artists, and the SAG-AFTRA union condemned the feature, saying it risked enabling nonconsensual digital replicas.
“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,” Meta said in a statement on Friday. “We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”
Emmy-winning actor Hannah Einbinder had urged her followers to turn the setting off after finding it had been switched on automatically. SAG-AFTRA called the automatic opt-in “unacceptable” and an “utter miscalculation of public sentiment regarding the obvious dangers and harms inherent in such use”. After the removal, a union spokesperson said, “We appreciate its discontinuance. It is the responsible thing to do.”
The reversal underscores growing pressure on tech firms to give users clear control over how publicly shared content is used to train or power AI tools. Meta’s Muse Image launch was its first major image-generation product from its Superintelligence Labs, but the privacy backlash forced an abrupt climb-down.
