Meta is on a roll these days. From introducing privacy-destroying surveillance fashion glasses to privacy-protecting usernames for Whatsapp to now furtively treating our public images as training data through Muse Image, the company has not left the news cycle.
Introduced last week, Muse Image is the first image-generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs, integrated with Meta AI. One of its features that created a furore worldwide was Muse Image’s ability to generate AI images using photos from public Instagram accounts.
If a user’s profile was public, another user could tag that account and use their images as part of an AI generated creation. The only exception to this feature were the private accounts and accounts belonging to users under 18.
Not that the company has a stellar record on privacy, but in this particular instance, even users were to have no notification, no idea that their public photos were incorporated into AI generated images by strangers. You may have uploaded a profile picture to identify yourself—or communicate with family and friends—without realising that anyone could turn you into AI raw material and reuse your public content.