Meta’s launch of its Muse Image AI generator has triggered a massive privacy backlash because it automatically opts public Instagram and Facebook accounts into a system where anyone can manipulate their likeness and photos. Using the Meta AI app or Instagram Stories, a user can tag a public account and direct the chatbot to pull from that creator’s published photos to generate entirely new, remixed AI images.
Advocacy groups like Public Citizen have condemned the rollout as an egregious invasion of privacy, criticizing Meta for quietly defaulting users into the system without explicit, affirmative consent.
“Unfortunately, we’ve reached a point where many technology companies treat every piece of our personal information—our photos, our voices, our biometric identifiers, even our relationships—as raw material to fuel their AI ambitions,” J.B. Branch, director of federal AI governance and technology policy at Public Citizen, said. “Privacy has already been eroded in countless ways, but allowing companies to appropriate people’s likenesses without meaningful, affirmative consent crosses what should be a brightline. If our faces can be repurposed for AI simply because we posted a public photo, then very little remains off limits. Congress should establish clear privacy protections that require affirmative consent before companies can use a person’s image or likeness for AI products.”
The privacy concerns include:
No Consent or Notification: Meta automatically enrolls users in the program. Crucially, the platform does not notify you when someone else uses your likeness or photos to generate an AI image.
Likeness Exploitation: Critics and organizations like Privacy International warn that the feature treats personal photos as “raw material” for non-consensual AI manipulation.
Buried Opt-Out Settings: Rather than asking users to opt in, Meta has buried the control to disable the feature deep within the application settings.
Irreversible Generation: Opting out only stops future AI remixes. Any AI-altered images generated from your account before you flip the switch will remain on Meta’s platform.
“People should not wake up to discover their face has become raw material for someone else’s AI experiment,” Branch said. “This is another invasion of consumers’ privacy. Instead of asking for meaningful consent, Meta quietly defaults users into the system and buries the opt-out in account settings. It’s a playbook we’ve come to expect from a company with a long history of putting its business interests ahead of the public.”
If your Instagram account is set to Private, you are automatically exempt from this feature, and other users cannot use your likeness. If you want to keep your account public but stop the AI scraping, you must manually disable it using the following steps outlined by The BBC and Mashable.
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