Meta has blocked a controversial feature that allowed users to modify photos from public Instagram accounts using AI. The feature, which launched earlier this week alongside a batch of other AI tools, “missed the mark” and is no longer available, according to the company.
Earlier this week, Meta announced Muse Image, a new AI image generator built by Meta Superintelligence Labs, its dedicated AI unit. Meta promoted a feature that allowed people to create images by @-mentioning public Instagram accounts they wanted to mention. The feature, which was not designed to alert a user if their photos were used in this way, drew immediate backlash.
TechCrunch has written its own guide on how to disable the feature.
Now Meta has reversed course. The company issued a blog post Friday announcing that it was removing the feature. Puck News founding partner Dylan Byers was the first to share it company decision.
“Our goal was to provide a useful creative tool and give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way,” the company posted on its blog. “We’ve heard feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”
TechCrunch has reached out to Meta for more information and will update this article if it responds.
Since its integration with social media platforms, AI has been abused with wild abandon — often they create nude images of female celebrities. Platforms attempted to moderate this tendency, although the guardrails introduced often failed.
In the case of the new Meta feature, it seems somewhat obvious that it would have been abused in this way. Indeed, Byers notes that the decision to remove the feature came “amid scrutiny from users and talent agencies, including CAA.”
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