How to stop people from using your Instagram posts with Meta's AI

• Instagram profiles default to letting users share and modify their content with Meta's new AI model.
• The feature allows users to download your posts, including your profile picture, to "reuse" them.
• You can toggle the permissions on and off in your settings — but only through the app.

If your Instagram account is public, your photos — including your profile picture — may now be fair game for other people's AI creations unless you change a setting buried in the app.

Meta's new Muse Image model, unveiled Tuesday, lets users generate AI images using public Instagram posts by tagging another person's account in a prompt.

Public accounts are opted in by default, allowing others to reuse posts, reels, and profile photos unless users manually switch the feature off.

The controls are only available in the Instagram app, under the "Sharing and reuse" tab in the settings menu, where users can disable separate toggles for posts and reels.

Existing AI-generated images made with your content won't be removed, and Instagram says on its help page about the feature that users won't be notified if their content is used by others.

The feature is part of Meta's broader push to compete in generative AI, as the company rolls out Muse Image to compete with rival image-generation tools from OpenAI, Google, Midjourney, and Adobe by making AI image creation a built-in feature for Instagram's billions of users.

The rollout is the latest flash point in Meta's long-running privacy battles. The company has faced years of scrutiny over its corporate and user-facing data practices, including criticism for using public posts to train AI models by default and requiring users to opt out rather than opt in.

Privacy advocates have long argued that such policies leave users with too little control over how their content is repurposed.