The Weekly Breach Breakdown: Ex-Muse Me? Meta Takes Away Its Controversial Muse Image AI Feature

Summary

• Meta launched an artificial intelligence image generator called Muse Image on July 7, 2026, which briefly included a feature letting users create AI-generated images using photos from public Instagram accounts.
• Anyone with a person’s Instagram username could generate images featuring their face without permission or sending a notification, as long as the account was public.
• The feature was enabled by default for public accounts, meaning users had to manually opt out if they didn’t want their content used in the new Muse Image feature.
• On July 10, 2026, Meta completely removed this feature from Instagram, stating that they missed the mark with the implementation of Muse Image.   
• If you want to learn more about protecting your identity, or think your identity has been misused, you can speak with an expert Identity Theft Resource Center advisor by phone, chat live on the web, or exchange emails during our normal business hours. Visit idtheftcenter.org to get started.

Full Transcript

Welcome to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s Weekly Breach Breakdown for July 17, 2026. I’m Tatiana Cuadras, Communications Assistant for the ITRC. Thanks to SentiLink for their continued support of the podcast and the ITRC. Each week, we look at the most recent events and trends related to data security and privacy. This week, we’re talking about people borrowing your face without permission, and then, three days later, realizing they were in the wrong.

On July 7, Meta launched a brand-new artificial intelligence image generator called “Muse Image,” and it came with a feature that a lot of users weren’t too happy with: anyone who stumbled across your public profile could create an AI-generated image with your face in it.

How did Muse Image work?

If you had a public Instagram account, anyone could open Muse, type in your handle, and generate entirely new AI images using your posts and reels without needing your green light; they only needed your username. One CNET reporter tested it out and, in under a minute, generated a deepfake-style image of a colleague, putting her face on a pirate. Her colleague had no idea her face was being used until she was told. Muse didn’t alert users if their content was used this way. The same photo you publicly shared from a vacation with friends and family could be repurposed into something else entirely, without you ever knowing. 

That setting was enabled by default for public accounts, meaning users had to find it and turn it off themselves, similar to when Instagram added its “Instants” feature, and people rushed to Google to learn how to disable it.

However, here’s the update: on Friday, July 10, just three days after launch, Meta pulled the Muse Image feature from Instagram entirely. According to a TechCrunch article, Meta claims that their intent was to provide a useful and creative tool to give people control over whether public content could be referenced in that way, and that they missed the mark with the implementation of Muse. 

AI has come a long way, and with that, so have AI-generated images. Social media platforms are attempting to keep up with the evolving field of artificial intelligence, but the guardrails for AI-generated images often fall short, leading to misuse of the tool. 

Contact the ITRC

If you want to know more about how to protect your identity from AI-generated deepfakes, or if you think your image, information, or identity has been misused, you can speak with an expert ITRC advisor on the phone, chat live on the web, or exchange emails during our normal business hours (Monday-Friday, 6 a.m.-5 p.m. PT). Just visit idtheftcenter.org to get started.

Thanks again to SentiLink for their support of the ITRC and this podcast. Please hit the like button for this episode and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. We’ll be back next week with a new episode of the Weekly Breach Breakdown. I’m Tatiana Cuadras. Until then, thanks for listening.