New Meta AI tool Muse Image raises Instagram user privacy concerns

There's been privacy concerns after the AI features were turned on by default without the user knowing

Published Jul 10, 2026  •  Last updated 10 minutes ago  •  2 minute read

This illustration photograph shows the logo of the US multinational technology Meta company displayed on a smartphone in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2026. Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON /AFP via Getty Images

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If you’re doom-scrolling on Instagram and you see your face on an AI-generated image, you might want to change your privacy settings.

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Meta has introduced its new AI tool, Muse Image, which creates pictures using other people’s Instagram photos — without informing them.

Muse Image is a feature that’s available via the Meta AI app and web browser, as well as on WhatsApp and on Instagram. It can create pictures from a few lines of written text instructions.

However, there’s been online concern after the AI features were turned on by default without users knowing, prompting them to have to check their in-app privacy settings.

How to turn it off

Muse Image tags public Instagram profiles and generates pictures by pulling faces of people featured in posts. Instagram users aren’t notified when their posts are used in what Meta described as its “most advanced image generation model yet.”

The simplest solution to prevent your image from being used is to switch your Instagram accounts to private.

“It’s a blunt solution, but it prevents strangers from using your public profile as source material,” cybersecurity company Malwarebytes wrote in a July 9 blog post, per The Guardian.

For those who want to keep their profile public, there are more steps one must take by heading deep into Instagram’s settings.

While in the Instagram app, click on your profile, then tap on the three lines in the top right corner of the screen. Scroll down to the “Sharing and reuse” tab and tap on it.

Under the “Allow people to share your posts and reel” section, turn off “Posts and reels to stories” and “Reposts on posts and reels.”

Under the section entitled “Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and with AI features at Meta,” turn off “Posts” and “Reels.”

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‘Obvious recipe for disaster’

In an interview with the BBC, Donald Campbell, advocacy director at tech justice non-profit Foxglove, said the new AI tool was an “obvious recipe for disaster.”

“We’ve already seen a catalogue of harms from non-consensual AI-altered images on social platforms just in the past year,” said Campbell. “It is hard to see why Mark Zuckerberg thinks facilitating yet more of this creepy image manipulation is a good idea.”

Technology privacy organization Privacy International also took issue with the new feature, telling the BBC that it was “the latest sign AI companies see people’s images and data as raw material to be exploited.”

Instagram users took to social media to criticize the new feature while warning others about it.

“Features like this just shouldn’t be enabled by default,” wrote one user.

“This shouldn’t be a feature at all in the first place,” said another.

“If a feature requires harvesting my identity, it should never start as a ‘yes,'” said another concerned user.

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