Photo Credit: Daniel Herron

Meta pulls its controversial Instagram AI image tool, which automatically opted in photos from all public accounts, just days after its launch.

Following intense backlash over privacy concerns, Meta has already pulled the plug on its new Instagram AI image feature, less than a week after launching it.

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

Meta launched Muse Image on Tuesday, its first AI-image generator designed to compete with the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Images 2.0 and Google’s Nano Banana 2. The new feature was incorporated into Instagram and automatically opted in all public accounts—meaning anyone could simply tag a username in an AI prompt and generate an image using their likeness.

Worse still, Instagram accounts wouldn’t be notified about any content created using the AI tool, so other users could manipulate a user’s videos and photos without their knowledge. Even more concerning, the only way to opt out was to manually turn the feature off in settings, which of course required knowing about it in the first place.

One user on the former Twitter called the tool “diabolical,” complaining that they couldn’t even turn the feature off. “It keeps automatically toggling it back on. I can’t turn it off unless I go [make the account] private.”

Users were particularly upset by the automatic enrollment, and many vowed to stop using Meta apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp altogether. “If a feature requires harvesting my identity, it should never start as a ‘yes,’” wrote one critic.

Celebrities like “Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder and even SAG-AFTRA spoke out about the feature.

“With the dangers of nonconsensual digital replicas well known to all, a feature that encouraged that behavior is unwise,” said a spokesperson for SAG-AFTRA after Meta scrapped the feature. “We appreciate its discontinuance. It is the responsible thing to do.”

But Meta isn’t the first company to face backlash over such an ill-conceived feature. Elon Musk’s AI Grok released a similar tool on X, formerly Twitter, earlier this year. His AI company is still facing a class-action lawsuit as well as an EU privacy investigation after Grok enabled users to “nudify” images of real women and children.