Meta Sets Default for Instagram Accounts to Permit Content Reuse by AI

Eli Tan, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):

The company’s new A.I. image generator has a surprising twist: It allows people to use images from public Instagram accounts.

When Meta unveiled an artificial intelligence image generator called Muse Image on Tuesday, it came with a feature that let users create A.I. images based on people’s Instagram photos. Any adult with a public Instagram account was automatically opted in. Using the Meta AI app, the company’s stand-alone chatbot, other users could pull from “part or all of your published photos” to create new A.I. images, the company wrote in a blog post.

This is an utterly unsurprising twist, given the entire history of the company. There are settings to turn this off (which Tan explains how to find), but to me it really does show that Meta views its users as something akin to vassals.

★ Thursday, 9 July 2026