Meta’s new AI image generator, Muse Image, can turn a person’s public Instagram photos into AI-generated pictures without telling them, and Meta opts public accounts into this by default. A user builds the image by @-mentioning someone’s account, and Meta neither asks for nor notifies the person whose photos it uses. The BBC reported that the tool is drawing backlash over consent, with critics warning it makes it easier to create non-consensual altered images.
Why it matters: Meta opts public accounts in by default, so anyone can use a person’s photos to build an AI image unless that person switches off a buried setting (how to do that is below). India has just built a deepfake takedown regime and spent months pressing X over Grok’s non-consensual image generation, and a Meta tool that turns public photos into AI images walks into the same fight.
Where Muse Image is live:
- It is the first image model from Meta Superintelligence Labs, available through the Meta AI app, the web, WhatsApp, and Instagram Stories, where it powers more than 30 new effects.
- It is currently live for United States users only, with Meta saying it will expand to Facebook and Messenger.
- Advertisers will be able to use it through Advantage+ creative “in the coming weeks.”
- Meta AI with Muse Image is free for everyday use, with heavier usage available through a subscription.
Critics say it is built for misuse: Meta’s press release claims users have “control… with an easy setting to turn this feature off at any time.” Critics say the design invites abuse regardless.
- Foxglove, a tech-justice non-profit, told the BBC it was an “obvious recipe for disaster,” citing a year of harms caused by non-consensual AI-altered images.
- Privacy International told the BBC it was “the latest sign AI companies see people’s images and data as raw material to be exploited.”
- The tool arrives as Ofcom investigates X over Grok for similar conduct that drew action from the Indian government, signalling the scrutiny Muse is likely to attract.
Meta says every output carries an invisible watermark, Content Seal, marking it as AI-generated. That establishes provenance but not consent: it confirms Meta’s AI made the image, but it does not stop someone from using a person’s face or remove images the tool has already created.
How India’s deepfake rules would apply: India has already faced a version of this with Grok, and its response points to how Muse Image would be treated here.
- The SGI takedown regime. The IT Rules amendments of February 2026 created India’s first deepfake framework, requiring platforms to label synthetically generated information (SGI) and act against unlawful SGI, with a three-hour takedown window for government orders and two hours for non-consensual intimate imagery. Content Seal speaks to the labelling duty; the generation of images of real people is what the takedown duties exist to contain.
- The Grok precedent. When X’s Grok let…
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