On July 7, 2026, Meta rolled out Muse Image, its first-ever AI image generator. The tool cranks out creative visuals based on photos and text prompts. Its main selling point is its ability to act as an AI agent — meaning the model actually reasons through a prompt, scrapes the web for context, and then builds the AI image.
But journalists noticed something else entirely: Meta quietly allowed the AI to use content from every Instagram user to generate content without their permission. Just days later, on July 10, they pulled the plug on the feature.
Here is what went wrong for Meta — and why this U-turn is no reason to let your guard down.
Muse Image churns out fun, vibrant images — nothing groundbreaking, on the surface. But here’s the catch: it could use absolutely any public Instagram account as a reference. An AI hobbyist didn’t even need to follow any of the Instagram accounts they used in their prompts. They just had to mention one in their prompt, and they could do whatever Muse Image would let them.
Surprisingly, Meta never gave creators any heads-up that their content was being used. The system didn’t send a single notification — even if random strangers were making money off the generated images.
Just a few days after the launch, Meta announced they were pulling the plug. The official line: “We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.” The company offered zero follow-up on how user content would be protected going forward, or whether something like this could happen again. There weren’t even the usual corporate platitudes about user privacy being their “top priority” — let alone promises to scrap the tech for good.
Two years ago, we published a post titled, Meta wants to use your posts and photos to train AI… Or does it? In it, we did a deep dive into the rumors swirling at the time about Meta potentially tapping user data across all its platforms without permission.
It all started back in May 2024, when the internet blew up with reports about yet another update to Meta’s privacy policy. Supposedly, starting that June, the company planned to use Facebook and Instagram content to train its generative AI. However, those notifications didn’t go out to everyone — only a select group of users in the EU and US received them.
Back in 2024, stories like this just felt like the endless tug-of-war between the media and big tech: the press accuses tech giants of every sin under the sun, and the giants make excuses. Sometimes they swap roles — it’s a classic routine. And sure, according to official data today, Meta AI isn’t training on your private DMs, but anything you actually send directly to the chatbot absolutely becomes brain food for the AI model.
Adding fuel to the fire is a recent story about NameTag, a feature designed to use Meta’s built-in AI assistant to identify people caught in the camera frame of Meta’s smart glasses and feed information about them to the wearer. The code needed to run NameTag was quietly slipped into the Meta AI app, but as soon as journalists caught wind of it, Meta immediately scrubbed the code from the next app update, which dropped just a day after the investigative report. We broke this down in more detail in our post, Meta vs. privacy: smart glasses take it a step too far.
During those few days when the public Instagram scraping feature was live, users had to manually tweak their security settings or lock down their profiles to protect their posts. While it’s definitely good news that Meta killed this “helpful new feature”, the relief might be temporary.
Meta is clearly testing the waters with a non-stop stream of new AI capabilities. Sure, if the backlash is loud enough, the company might pivot or shelve a specific feature — but that doesn’t mean the idea itself is dead. Once the tech is built, it can easily make a comeback down the road under a different guise. How? That’s just a marketing puzzle for them to solve.
Both of these incidents are a blunt reminder that big tech can move the goalposts whenever it wants. It can update privacy policies, expand how it uses your data, or train its AI models on your personal information. You can’t completely insure yourself against these shifts, and keeping track of them is a massive headache.
It’s becoming crystal clear that locking down your accounts is more critical than ever, and checking your privacy settings needs to be a regular habit. The less personal data and content you leave out in the open by default, the less material there is to feed these new AI features.
To help you secure your accounts across various services and social media sites, check out our free online tool, Privacy Checker. It’s a vast library of step-by-step privacy guides tailored to your specific OS, platform, and even your browser.
Want to know what other risks come with uninvited AI, and how to minimize them? Check out our deep dives here:
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