Meta has introduced a new AI image generator developed in its Superintelligence Labs, dubbed Muse Image, and it’s already able to access your Instagram photos if your account is public. As first noted by Wired, if you tag any public Instagram account using the tool, you can prompt Meta AI to generate an image based on that account — even without permission from the account owner.
Meta says that Muse Image “follows instructions faithfully, edits with precision, composes from multiple references, and draws on Instagram for social context [emphasis added]. It also brings agentic tool use capabilities and integrates with Muse Spark.”
Meta mentions on its “reuse of Instagram media” help page that for public accounts “people may be able to create content with your Instagram content using AI features at Meta,” and notes that the reused content could be discoverable in search engine results. So in theory, an AI-altered image of you created by an Instagram user you may or may not know could rank higher in Google’s search gen-AI-driven results than real images of you.
Testing Meta’s Muse AI image generator
I’m fortunate to have a great headshot taken by a friend who’s a very good professional photographer that I use across my socials. So after downloading the Meta AI app and giving it access to my Instagram account, I asked it to create a more “glamorous”version of my profile photo.
I asked it to take that photo and create an image of me driving a boat on the water (h/t to Gizmodo for the inspo; they created an image of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg driving a ’60s spy movie car lol). It looked fine, but the hair probably could have been blowing in the breeze more.
And as Meta notes, the AI behaves like a chatbot when prompted to create an image; during my test run, it described the images it created, (“here’s your glamour upgrade”) and on the boat image, the AI described it as such: “Here you are at the helm – sunshine, blue water, and that same glam look from your portrait, just with a nautical twist” and then asked if I wanted to try a “different vibe on the water.”
It also asked me if I wanted to make enhancements to any images it created: it offered to add the word “Pennsylvania” to one image, even though I didn’t mention the Keystone State in my prompts — however, a good percentage of my Insta photos are either of Pennsylvania or geolocated there.
I don’t have a ton of selfies on my Instagram page, mostly because I tend to use it to promote work (and I always make a weird face in selfies). There are more than a few photos of my dog, because she’s extremely photogenic. But when prompted to “create an image of me and my dog wearing flowered hats,” it couldn’t find the dog in my Instagram library and asked me to upload a photo.
Finally, when prompted to create a photo of me at Taylor Swift’s wedding (I think my invite got lost in the mail), Meta AI was not able to — even when I tagged her Instagram account. It’s likely her social team already opted her account out of being included. I asked Meta if public accounts like Swift’s are excluded from Muse Image generation, but the company didn’t provide an answer.
We don’t have to imagine what the potential for abuse with this tool might be; we need only look at what happened when Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) integrated its xAI into the social platform last year via its Grok chatbot. The site was inundated with nonconsensual nude and sexualized images, some of them of children. Several lawsuits have been filed and some countries blocked the app entirely.
A Meta spokesperson said in an email that the company “built Muse Image with strong controls and safety guardrails from day one,” emphasizing that private accounts and accounts of under-18 users are automatically excluded, “and adult users with public accounts can opt out with just a couple clicks.”
Meta will “take action against any content that violates our Community Standards,” the spokesperson said. The company also notes that anyone who sees an AI-generated image on Instagram they find “objectionable” can report it by “pressing and holding the image, selecting the ‘thumbs down’ option, and choosing a reason for reporting.”
How to opt-out your Instagram account
For now, here’s how to opt out of this feature if you don’t want Meta AI to access your Instagram images but want to keep your account settings public: Tap the three-line hamburger menu in the upper right corner of your Instagram profile page. Scroll down the list until you find “sharing and reuse.” Click that and find the section labeled “allow people to use your content on Instagram and with AI features on Meta.” There, you should be able to toggle the settings off for Posts and Reels.
This article was updated after publication to include a statement from Meta.
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