Meta Retracts Dangerous AI Feature Following Public Backlash

Meta will no longer use public Instagram posts to generate AI images, the social media company announced Friday, following days of public backlash.

The controversial feature launched last Tuesday when Meta rolled out Meta Muse, a new AI program which can create and alter images.

Until Friday, Meta enabled the program, which is embedded into Instagram and WhatsApp, to draw from an alter public Instagram posts — unless users chose to opt out. In other words, when a user asked Meta Muse to create or edit a photo, the program would construct the new images by trawling and taking parts of existing Instagram photos.

Meta customers were none too pleased.

Hayley McNamara, executive director and chief strategy officer of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, wrote in a press release:

This is the opposite of safety by design — it’s vulnerability by design, making it easier to generate AI images of real people while creating obvious and foreseeable opportunities for exploitation, sexual abuse, harassment and identity fraud.

“How was this ever given a green light?” she asked.

McNamara isn’t speaking hypothetically. When xAI embedded Grok Imagine, a generative AI program like Meta Muse, into X earlier this year, disaster followed. The platform flooded with fake images of real people stripped naked or performing simulated sex acts. On at least two occasions, Grok Imagine produced sexual photos of children.

According to recent interviews with two former employees, requests to generate sexual material still make up “well over half” of Grok’s traffic.

AI photo generators don’t just create risk for sexual exploitation. They also notoriously use and alter images protected by copyright.

Actors, public personalities and their representatives were among the most vehement critics of Meta Muse’s ties to Instagram, with the powerful actors union SAG-AFTRA calling the Meta’s decision to make users opt-out of sharing images with the program “an utter miscalculation of public sentiment” regarding AI use.

Meta caved to pressure Friday, stopping Meta Muse from drawing on public Instagram photos.

“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,” the company wrote in a statement.

“We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”

While Meta may offer Instagram users a brief reprieve, it likely won’t back off for long.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg intends to make Meta an AI company, The New York Times reports. He spent billions of dollars last year creating the company’s new AI division.

This year, Meta will invest another $145 billion in AI, a massive expenditure which will reportedly include further integrating AI into its platforms.

It’s no surprise, then, that Meta Muse remains available on WhatsApp and Meta AI. Some Instagram filters powered by Meta Muse remain in effect. The program is expected to be embedded into Facebook and Messenger later this year, per the BBC. Meta also plans to introduce a new AI video generator sometime this year.

Zuckerberg’s AI ambitions are concerning given his proven disregard for user safety. The social media mogul topped NCOSE’s 2026 Dirty Dozen List, which highlights 12 mainstream entities that facilitate, enable or profit from the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.

Zuckerberg became the first individual to make the Dirty Dozen List because of his “consistent deprioritization of child safety,” McNamara explained in April, noting examples like:

Meta’s AI chatbot, which included design features allowing it to engage in sexual conversations with minors.
Meta’s chronically ineffective teen safety tools.
A previous Instagram policy requiring an account be flagged for sex trafficking 17 times before it be removed.

This latest scandal is yet another example of Meta and Zuckerberg’s pathological refusal to consider safety first.

“Safety must be built in, not bolted on after public backlash,” McNamara wrote in a Monday press release.

“Meta cannot keep rolling out dangerous products and only pulling them back when public outrage becomes too loud to ignore.”

Additional Articles and Resources

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