{"id":287756,"date":"2026-07-09T18:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/09\/instagrams-ai-image-generator-alarms-privacy-experts-instagram\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T19:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T23:00:11","slug":"instagrams-ai-image-generator-alarms-privacy-experts-instagram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/09\/instagrams-ai-image-generator-alarms-privacy-experts-instagram\/","title":{"rendered":"Instagram\u2019s AI image generator alarms privacy experts | Instagram"},"content":{"rendered":"

Instagram\u2019s AI image generator alarms privacy experts | Instagram<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/jul\/09\/instagram-ai-image-generator-privacy<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-07-09 18:16:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Meta has sparked blowback from privacy advocates for allowing its new AI image maker to generate photos of users with public profiles by default.<\/p>\n

Users of Meta\u2019s Muse Image AI tool, released Tuesday, can tag public Instagram profiles and generate pictures that pull from faces of people featured in these social media posts. Instagram users aren\u2019t notified when their posts are integrated into what the company describes as its \u201cmost advanced image generation model yet\u201d.<\/p>\n

The easiest and most comprehensive solution for those worried about their photos being sucked into Muse Image is to switch public Instagram accounts to private.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a blunt solution, but it prevents strangers from using your public profile as source material,\u201d notes cybersecurity company Malwarebytes in a 9 July blogpost. But for those who want to keep their account public, there\u2019s a more measured approach, too.<\/p>\n

A Meta spokesperson said in a statement to the Guardian that Muse Image has been built \u201cwith strong controls and safety guardrails from day one\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrivate accounts and those belonging to users under 18 are automatically excluded and adult users with public accounts can opt out with easy-to-use controls,\u201d the company said, adding that it would \u201ctake action against any content that violates [their] community standards\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meta directs Instagram users who want to opt out of having their photos fed into their AI image generator to go to the \u201csharing and reuse\u201d section of settings, and toggle a button that allows people to reuse your content.<\/p>\n

Privacy advocates argue that expecting users to proactively turn off this feature is unfair \u2013 and that \u201cfinding the setting is its own adventure\u201d, as Malwarebytes writer Danny Bradbury describes.<\/p>\n

A blogpost from the privacy-focused company Proton says that \u201cdata sharing is turned on by default, the opt-out is buried deep in settings, and public backlash becomes the main way users find out what happened to their content\u201d….<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Instagram\u2019s AI image generator alarms privacy experts | Instagram https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/jul\/09\/instagram-ai-image-generator-privacy Publish Date: 2026-07-09 18:16:00 Source…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":287757,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/3b54d58e56432cfdd5ea4ccb50f9515661536d6b\/508_0_5033_4024\/master\/5033.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=a1f83cd11e496eddc9af135749eb8e73","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287758,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287756\/revisions\/287758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}