The easiest and most comprehensive solution for those worried about their photos being sucked into Muse Image is to switch public Instagram<\/a> 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.<\/a> 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<\/a> 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. They urge users to \u201cwatch the toggles closely\u201d because \u201cthe on and off states look nearly identical and a glance, and it\u2019s easy to leave one active by mistake\u201d.<\/p>\n While Meta notes that Muse Image users can\u2019t tag accounts belonging to users under the age of 18, and that teens can\u2019t use the feature to tag or reference other accounts, the company has not yet clarified whether children depicted in photos of public accounts belonging to adults could be plugged into prompts. Proton said children depicted in public photos risk having their faces appropriated.<\/p>\n Thorin Klosowski, a senior security and privacy activist at Electronic Frontier Foundation, says: \u201cThis is the sort of setting that should absolutely be opt-in for Instagram users.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a new use of the photos they\u2019ve been posting publicly for years, and certainly wasn\u2019t on anyone\u2019s mind when they signed up for Instagram years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
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