Meta yanked its new Instagram AI image feature – which automatically opted in photos from all public accounts – just a few days after launch following heated backlash over privacy concerns.
“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 Friday.
“We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”
The Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp owner last Tuesday launched Muse Image, its first AI image generator meant to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT Images 2.0 and Google’s Nano Banana 2.
Meta’s Superintelligence Labs folded the new bot into Instagram and automatically enrolled all public accounts, meaning anyone on the internet could simply tag your username in an AI prompt and generate an image using your likeness.
Instagram accounts would not be notified about content created using the AI image tool, so your photos and videos could be transformed by other users without your knowledge – unless you manually turned off the feature in settings.
“This is diabolical,” one user wrote in a post on X, complaining that they were unable to turn off the feature. “It keeps automatically toggling it back on. I can’t turn it off unless I go private.”
Another user complained: “Basically now anyone can clone your voice, face easily on Insta. And even if you figure this privacy setting out and switch it off, some are reporting it turns on by itself. So I have a simple recommendation as always. Stop using Meta’s products.”
Many online blasted Meta for automatically enrolling public accounts, with one writing, “Classic Instagram making us do homework just to keep our privacy,” while another wrote, “If a feature requires harvesting my identity, it should never start as a ‘yes.’”
Others argued that Meta had likely automatically enrolled accounts because the public remains skeptical of artificial intelligence.
“AI features like this in Meta and Google services are opt in by default because they get to show their reports as NUMBER GO UP, after pouring billions into AI that NO ONE WANTS!” one infuriated user wrote.
“Damn theyre [sic] trying real hard to force their slop down eveyrone’s [sic] throat,” another jibed.
Yet another asked: “How is there not 1 [sic] sensible human on that leadership team to say, ‘Oh wait, our customers hate this slop. Maybe we shouldn’t force it on them?’”
People also shared difficulties turning off the feature through the web browser version of Instagram, saying they needed to download the app to opt-out of the tool.
Emmy-winning actor and “Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder slammed the feature in a post on Instagram, as did SAG-AFTRA, the union representing Hollywood actors and workers.
After Meta scrapped the feature, a spokesperson for the union said: “With the dangers of nonconsensual digital replicas well known to all, a feature that encouraged that behavior is unwise. We appreciate its discontinuance. It is the responsible thing to do.”
It’s not the first AI image generator to face backlash, after Elon Musk’s Grok launched a similar tool earlier this year.
His AI company is currently facing a class-action lawsuit and an EU privacy investigation after Grok allowed users to “nudify” images of real women and children on social-media platform X.
Apple reportedly privately threatened to remove Grok from its App Store in January over the deepfake controversy.
