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Meta is facing a backlash with its new AI tool Muse Image, which can generate images of other people’s profile pictures without telling them.
Text to Image is one of the many publicly available tools that, as the name suggests, can create pictures from a few lines of simple text.
The moose image is available to US users in the Meta AI app and web browser, as well as WhatsApp and Instagram Stories.
While Meta said users could opt out of having their images used on public accounts as well, Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at tech justice non-profit Foxglove, told the BBC it was “a clear recipe for disaster”.
“Over the past year, we’ve seen a catalog of damage from non-consensual AI-altered images,” he said.
“It’s hard to see why Mark Zuckerberg would think it would be a good idea to facilitate this horrendous image manipulation.”
The behavior is likely to face increased scrutiny as regulators and campaigners raise concerns over AI-generated images. Currently investigating X Beyond Grok’s role in creating and sharing images of real people transformed by AI.
Privacy International also criticized the behaviour, telling the BBC that “the latest AI companies see people’s images and data as raw material to be exploited”.
“Pulling real users into fake photos without express consent is a privacy land mine waiting to explode.” A user wrote on X, External.
A separate setting separate from account privacy controls allows users to opt out even if they have a public account, Meta said.
To do this, users need to go to Instagram’s settings menu, select “Sharing & Reuse” and turn off “Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and AI features on Meta.”
