Goal has removed the controversial feature of Muse Image that allowed generate images with artificial intelligence from the photographs of any public Instagram account. The company presented it on Tuesday, July 7 and deactivated it on Friday the 10th, just three days laterin the face of criticism for having enabled by default without requesting the consent of those affected.
The system worked from the application Meta AI. As the company explained then, it was enough to @ mention a public Instagram account so that Muse Image will use your photographs as reference. In this way, it was possible recreate the face, appearance or even the photographic style of another person without being aware of it, since I did not receive any type of notification. Private accounts and those belonging to minors under 18 years of age were excluded.
‘Our intention was to provide a useful creative tool and allow people to control whether their public content could be referenced in this way. We have heard the comments that indicate that this function has not been successfulso it is no longer available,’ Meta explained when updating the launch statement.
Muse Image, the first image generation model to emerge from Superintelligence Labswas released last week in the United States. In Spainalthough its arrival depends on the progressive deployment by territories, public accounts were probably exposed while the option was active, given that the company has not indicated that there was a different operation for Europe.
Before removing it, Meta included by default all public adult accounts. To prevent their photos and videos from being used in new creations, the user had to enter their profile, press the three linesopen ‘Share and reuse’ and separately disable posts and reels options within ‘Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and with AI features from Meta’. Another possibility was to make the account private. Exclusion only prevented new generations and did not eliminate images that had already been created.
The decision provoked numerous criticisms within and outside the audiovisual industry. ‘Not only does this clearly erode our rights to our own image, but it also constitutes an obvious tool for sextortion and other types of scams. Go for a high-risk design and then forcing people to jump through numerous hoops to disable it is unacceptable‘, he reported in X Haley McNamaraexecutive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
It’s time for @Meta to REVERSE COURSE.
Not only does this obviously erode our rights to our own likeness…
but it is an obvious tool for #sextortion and other scammers!Pursuing high-risk design & then putting the onus on individuals to jump through hoops to opt out is… https://t.co/Hfi1jcKVXW
— Haley McNamara (@HaleyMcNamara) July 10, 2026
SAG-AFTRAthe main American union of actors and other audiovisual media professionals, recommended its members immediately deactivate the function and also described it as ‘unacceptable’ any system that did not start from clear consent. The representation agency CAA It also demanded that no name, image, voice or creative work could be used in AI models. without express and documented authorization. Public Citizenan American consumer advocacy organization, spoke of a ‘blatant invasion’ of privacy, while Electronic Frontier Foundation specializing in digital rights, argued that a new use of photographs published for years should be disabled by default.
Meta initially argued that Muse Image incorporated barriers to block violent, sexual or defamatory images of real people. The pressure ended up being imposed and the company has eliminated the possibility of using public profiles through a simple mention. The Muse Image model and its other image generation and editing tools remain operational.