Meta withdraws Muse Image from Instagram

Meta has withdrawn a new Instagram feature called Muse Image days after launching it, following backlash over how the tool could draw on users’ public posts. According to Reuters, the feature was switched on automatically and let people generate and edit images inside Meta’s AI chatbot using content from public Instagram accounts.

Muse Image was presented as a creative add-on, but its mechanics put a familiar social-media bargain under a harsher light. Public Instagram posts are already widely viewable, yet many users treat “public” as a setting for human audiences, not a permission slip for remixing at scale. The Reuters report says Muse Image could take photos as input and allow edits via sketches, a workflow that makes it easier to produce lookalikes and stylistic imitations without contacting the original poster. The opt-out design mattered: when a feature is enabled by default, the burden shifts to individual users to discover it, understand it, and disable it—while the platform collects the benefit of immediate adoption.

Criticism arrived from both prominent users and organized labor. Emmy-winning actor Hannah Einbinder posted that the feature had been turned on automatically and urged followers to switch it off, Reuters reports. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors and other media professionals, went further, urging members and Instagram users to opt out and arguing that anything short of a “clear and conspicuous” opt-in was unacceptable. The union framed the risk in terms of “nonconsensual digital replicas,” language that reflects an industry where performers already negotiate over likeness, reuse, and residual value.

Meta said it intended to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced, but acknowledged feedback that it “missed the mark,” Reuters reports. SAG-AFTRA welcomed the decision to discontinue the feature.

Muse Image was Meta’s first image-generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs, Reuters notes. It launched on Tuesday and is now no longer available.