Meta has paused a feature in its new Muse Image Tool that allowed users to generate images based on Instagram content – including from other people’s accounts.
The feature automatically opted in all Instagram users with a public account, allowing people’s likenesses to be used in AI images without their consent.
After complaints about privacy and copyright concerns, the feature was switched off.
Privacy, copyright concerns
The issue has raised new scrutiny of a systemic privacy issue: the “consent on” default setting for AI training on social media, with Muse marking a significant shift from using data for general model improvements to a more personal and potentially invasive application of generative AI.
“While past AI developments mostly worked out of sight, Muse Image changes the game by letting users directly reference public Instagram accounts to create images using data from those posts. This shift turns the ‘consent on’ default into a critical privacy risk, as individuals have no way of knowing when their personal photos are being harvested as source material for someone else’s AI-generated content,” says Luís Costa, research and insights team lead at Surfshark.
AI model training
According to a recent Surfshark study, nearly all major social media platforms prioritise AI development over user privacy by default, using active data collection for model training.
The study found that eight out of the 10 most popular social media platforms set AI training consent to “on” by default. This “opt-out” rather than “opt-in” model means that unless users proactively navigate complex settings and forms to revoke access, their years of posts, photos, and even private interactions have likely already been integrated into training sets.
“If you’ve ever shared content on social media, it’s highly likely that your photos are already being exploited as a resource for AI training without your clear consent. Our findings revealed that because platforms lack user-friendly opt-out options, much of this data usage is effectively irreversible. Opting out today only prevents future collection, but it cannot undo the training that has already occurred,” says Costa.
Surfshark points out that the issue of using user content for AI training is also highlighted by other social media platforms, most notably Reddit, which offers no option to opt out of AI model training. Its vast forum discussions are openly used for global AI development, highlighted by contracts with Google and OpenAI to license this user-generated data. In contrast, Discord stands out as the singular exception among the 10 platforms examined. It explicitly states that it does not use user data for AI training.