Meta shuts down Instagram AI tool after backtracking on social accounts

Meta on Friday retired an artificial intelligence feature that allows users to generate photos by referencing social accounts on Instagram, days after introducing the tool as part of a wider rollout of AI-powered creative features on Instagram.

The company announced this decision in an update to its Instagram blog.

“Earlier this week, we announced that another way for people to generate images in Meta AI is by @-inioning social Instagram accounts that they want to reference,” the company wrote. “Our goal was to provide a useful creative tool and give people control over how their public content can be referenced in this way. We've heard feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it's no longer available.”

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The feature was announced on Tuesday along with more than 30 new AI-powered effects for Instagram stories using Muse Image, the first image generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs. According to Instagram, the new effects allow users to change photos with a single tap, while the redesigned editor allows users to preview AI-generated edits before sharing.

As part of the release, Meta also introduced a feature that allows users to @-mention social Instagram accounts in Meta AI to generate creative images with those accounts, including personalized birthday cards, group trip memes and other edited images.

“We want our community to control how their content is used creatively,” Instagram said in Tuesday's announcement. The company said users who don't want their public Instagram content to be used with the AI ​​feature can disable it by using the app's sharing and repurposing settings.

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The Instagram logo is seen on a mobile device in this photo taken in Warsaw, Poland, on July 20, 2023. ((Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images) / Getty Images)

SAG-AFTRA, which represents actors across film, television and other media, urged members on Thursday to walk out of the event, writing on social media, “Take action to protect your likeness.”

Neal K. Shah, an NIH-funded care researcher and CEO of CareYaya, said he has seen AI-generated ads misuse his likeness to promote supplements that falsely claim to help people with dementia.

“I think the biggest bells and whistles for me are seeing fraud happen in real time,” Shah told FOX Business. He said that his followers started sending him messages after seeing advertisements that show praise for products that he has never advertised.

“All these seniors have been scammed, my image was used to scam them, and there is nothing I can do about it,” said Shah, adding that he has spent many hours responding to fans warning them that the ads are fake.

Shah said that since he started warning viewers in his videos not to trust the advertisements that appear to show him promoting products and he has spent many hours answering fans who asked if that was true. He also said that he reported several times about the advertisements at Meta but said that they remained on the platform.

Friday's update removes the ability to generate photos by @-mentioning social Instagram accounts, while leaving a broader rollout of Instagram's AI-powered creative tools in place.

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Meta has made artificial intelligence a major focus of its business, expanding AI-powered features across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger while investing heavily in AI infrastructure and its Llama family of AI models.

In response to a request for comment from FOX Business, Meta directed Fox Business to an updated Instagram blog post announcing the change.