Meta’s new AI image tool can use public Instagram photos
Meta’s Muse Image can pull public Instagram photos into AI-generated images without telling account owners. Public users can opt out in Instagram’s Sharing and reuse settings.
Meta launched Muse Image on July 7, giving its new image generator access to public Instagram photos as visual references inside Meta AI, Instagram Stories and WhatsApp for users in the United States. Meta says Muse Image is the first image generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs, and it can also build images from text prompts and blend multiple photos into new results.
The sharpest privacy issue is how Meta defines public. A user can @-mention a public Instagram account in a prompt, and Meta says its AI will use that account’s public photos to help generate an image. The account owner is not notified. Private accounts are not exposed in the same way, because their posts are not publicly shareable, but public profiles are treated as available input for Meta’s AI systems unless the owner changes a separate control.
That control sits inside Instagram, not the general privacy menu. Users who want to limit reuse have to open Sharing and reuse and turn off the setting labeled “Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and with AI features at Meta.” Meta says that opt-out is separate from account privacy settings, which means making an account private is not the same as blocking AI reuse of public content.
The company’s own June 15 Facebook AI update emphasized a different standard for some camera-roll sharing suggestions, saying those tools remained opt-in only and could be turned off at any time. That makes Muse Image’s handling of public Instagram content stand out: public by default, unless users actively change the reuse setting.
Privacy advocates reacted sharply. Donald Campbell of Foxglove called the feature an “obvious recipe for disaster,” while Privacy International said the approach treats people’s images and data as raw material to be exploited. The rollout comes amid wider pressure on AI image abuse, including Ofcom’s ongoing investigation into X over Grok and reports involving non-consensual sexualized imagery. For Instagram users, the immediate question is no longer whether a photo is visible to others, but whether Meta can also feed it into AI generation unless the right toggle is switched off.
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