Meta shut down its new AI photo-generation feature less than a week after its launch
The Muse Image project was shut down following criticism from users and labor unions
Meta is shutting down its new AI feature, Musa Image, less than a week after its launch. Photo: Skorzewiak/Shutterstock
Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, suspended its new AI feature, Muse Image, less than a week after its launch. Among other things, the feature allowed users to generate images based on photos from public Instagram accounts, but it drew criticism due to privacy concerns, according to Reuters.
"Our goal was to provide a useful creative tool and give people control over whether public content could be used as a basis," Meta said in a statement. The company added: “We’ve received feedback that this feature didn’t meet expectations, so it is no longer available.”
What You Need to Know About Muse Image
Meta launched Muse Image on July 7. The release marked the first launch of a product of this kind by Meta’s AI division, Superintelligence Labs, since Meta spent billions of dollars a year ago to revamp its AI lab, Bloomberg notes.
The Muse Image tool was built into the Meta AI chatbot and also integrated into the Instagram app (including filters and effects for Stories) and WhatsApp. It allowed users to use photos from public Instagram profiles as source material to generate new images, and then edit the resulting image directly within the apps. For example, users could enhance an image using text prompts or their own sketches.
However, the feature has drawn criticism from users, according to Reuters. In particular, Emmy Award-winning actress Hannah Einbinder criticized the new feature on her Instagram and urged her followers to manually disable the setting that allows Muse Image to use their images. Later, the Hollywood union SAG-AFTRA—the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists—also called on industry professionals and ordinary users to stop using the tool.
What about the stocks?
In premarket trading on July 13, Meta shares fell by about 1%; year-to-date, they are up just over 1%.
Context
Over the past year, Meta has been actively investing in upgrading its artificial intelligence lab. To that end, the company has, in particular, hired several highly paid AI developers, Bloomberg reports, noting that the owner of Facebook and Instagram is striving to create its own AI models capable of competing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. In April, Meta’s AI division unveiled its first large language model, and it is now working on a video-generation tool that is expected to be released in the coming months, the agency reports.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
