About a week ago Meta announced new AI-driven creative services: Muse Image, a generator for images, and Muse Video, for creating videos. Muse Video has not been released yet, while Muse Image was made available — and problems with one of its features quickly surfaced.
One option in Muse Image allowed the system, via a prompt, to access an Instagram profile and generate an image based on the pictures visible on that profile. If the profile was public, the algorithm could use the profile photo and past posts to produce the requested image; if the account was private, the system reported it could not access the images.
Meta stated that the service includes safety guarantees intended to prevent generation of sexual or similarly problematic content, but many observers raised concerns about the use of other people’s photos without their explicit consent. While users could opt out of having their images used, that setting was nested deeper in Instagram’s settings, and a simpler workaround was to set the account to private.
Criticism came not only from everyday users. The Hollywood agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), whose clients include Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, said that no one’s name, likeness, voice or creative work should be used by a third party without the individual’s explicit permission.
Following the backlash, Meta said it had turned off that Muse Image capability, admitting the feature had “missed the mark.” The company said its aim had been to provide a useful creative tool and framed the removal as a response to shortcomings in the feature’s design.
There is no official word yet on whether Meta will rework the feature or abandon it entirely. Muse Video remains a planned product that has not been released to the public.
