Meta’s New AI Tool Creates Deepfakes. Here’s How to Protect Yourself on Instagram

Meta has a new AI model out, and it’s a recipe for a potential deepfake disaster and even more AI slop. If you have a public account, you need to change your settings now to avoid ending up the unwitting subject of anyone’s AI creations.

The model, called Muse Image, is the first creative model from the new family of Muse Spark models made by Meta’s superintelligence labs. The company said in a blog post that it’s built to handle more complex requests, create composite photos and edit existing images. It’s available now on the Meta AI app, Instagram and WhatsApp, with plans to eventually bring it to Facebook, Messenger and advertisers. 

If you’re over 18 and have a public account, anyone with a Meta AI account can “tag” you in their AI image prompts and create hyperrealistic AI images including your likeness — otherwise known as deepfakes. I gave the new model a spin this week, and I was able to make a deepfake of my CNET colleague Abrar Al-Heeti in less than a minute by including her Instagram username in my prompt. 

The backlash to Meta’s new deepfaking AI was instant and intense, from regular Instagram users to advocacy and trade groups. Actors union SAG-AFTRA told the LA Times that being automatically opted into this tool was “an utter miscalculation of public sentiment regarding the obvious dangers and harms inherent in such use.” Haley McNamara, executive director of tech watchdog National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said, “How was this ever given a green light? … [Meta is] creating obvious and foreseeable opportunities for exploitation, sexual abuse, harassment, and identity fraud.”

This isn’t the first time an AI company has tried to entice people to use its creative AI by offering to place you and your friends into the AI scenery. That was OpenAI’s pitch when it launched its ill-fated Sora video app in 2024. But OpenAI still drew ire from regular people and celebrities for its role in easily creating deepfakes. Meta’s new AI model poses the same risk.

These controls will be essential for professional creators and influencers, whose names and likenesses are their brand and therefore their livelihood. Meta says its models have built-in protections to prevent the model from creating illegal, abusive or defamatory content. But like we saw with Sora, motivated bad actors can get around a model’s safeguards. We will have to wait and see if Meta’s are up to the challenge.

How to opt out of Meta AI deepfaking: Change these Instagram settings

There are two main ways to opt out. One is to turn your account from public to private. Here’s how.

1. Open Instagram and navigate to your profile.
2. Tap the three lines in the upper right corner to open your settings.
3. Tap Account privacy.
4. Turn on Private account.

Private accounts automatically don’t have their content accessible for anyone to remix or create with. But it will also make it harder for other people to discover and interact with your account. If you need to keep your account public — like if you’re a creator or business — here’s what you can do to still protect yourself.

1. Open Instagram and navigate to your profile.
2. Tap the three lines in the upper right corner to open your settings.
3. Scroll down to a category called Sharing and reuse.
4. Toggle off the setting “Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and with AI features at Meta.”
5. You can do this to block Meta AI’s access to your post and reels.

If you use the Meta AI app, you can change your settings in there, too. You can adjust how your likeness can be used in the app by going to Settings > Your likeness. You can choose who is allowed to use your likeness, including only yourself, followers you approve, mutuals or everyone.