Meta removed its Muse Image AI feature from Instagram on Friday, just three days after its unveiling. The decision comes after a wave of backlash from the social media platform’s users, as well as public entities like CAA and SAG-AFTRA.
In a statement updating its launch announcement, a spokesperson for Meta said that Muse Image “missed the mark.”
“Earlier this week, we announced that one way for people to generate images in Meta AI is by mentioning public Instagram accounts that they want to reference,” the statement read. “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. We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”
In a launch announcement Tuesday, Meta described Muse Image as the company’s first image generation model. The feature allowed users to tag Instagram accounts in image-generation prompts, using likenesses featured in public profiles as reference for its output.
All public profiles for users over the age of 18 were made available as reference to Muse Image by default. Users had to enter their account settings to manually disable the feature in order for their images to be excluded. Additionally, users were not alerted if material from their profile had been used as a reference for Muse Image.
The new feature sparked instant backlash among users and grave concern from the entertainment industry. Several media outlets published guides instructing users on how to opt their accounts out. SAG-AFTRA issued a statement recommending that its members and other users should “take action to protect your likeness.” A similar release from CAA also slammed Meta: “No one’s name, image, likeness, voice or creative work should be used by any third party, including AI models, without clear, documented consent.”
Muse Image went live Tuesday on meta.ai, as well as on Instagram Stories in the U.S. and on WhatsApp in select international territories. Meta had also teased a coming expansion to Facebook and a video model, Muse Video.
The three-day saga marks the latest entertainment industry uproar concerning AI image generation tools and the nascent legal guardrails around the technology’s ability to reference people’s likenesses for its output. Last October, SAG-AFTRA released a statement condemning OpenAI’s similar opt-out feature for its now-defunct video generating model Sora 2, arguing it “threatens the economic foundation of our entire industry.”
