After protests, Meta has switched off a function of its AI “Meta Muse”. The model, which has been available since Tuesday of this week, was previously able to create images based on any Instagram profile. The style of an account could be copied and transferred to your own ideas in a prompt. Although you could prevent this by opting out for your own account, images in Instagram were initially available to the AI by default.
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As a spokesperson for Meta now told the Hollywood industry media Variety, “this function has missed its goal and is therefore no longer available.” On the Meta Muse product page there is text with the same wording as an “update”.
The major artist agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) also pointed out that a person’s appearance, known in the industry as “likeness”, should never be copied without express consent. US actors, among others, had their appearance protected before the AI boom of the last few years – and monetized it in exchange for license payments, for example for AI-generated commercials.
Pressure from Hollywood
The influential actors’ union SAG-AFTRA also spoke out against the “opt-out” and the copying of certain styles. In addition to the professional actors, many creators, not only on Instagram, live primarily from their own style that makes them look authentic to their fans. For them, such copy functions, and not just through Meta, represent an ongoing problem.
Legally, such features often operate in a gray area because the AI models do not represent direct copies of a specific work, but rather only synthesize its properties. This ability was already noticed over a year ago using the example of ChatGPT, which was able to create images in the style of the animation studio Ghibli. This now works with newer models with realistic-looking images that look like real photos.
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