The Verge56%
Meta turns off the Instagram feature that let users make AI deepfakes of public accounts 23%
By Jay Peters31%
7/10/2026, 4:49:50 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, Framing Effect, and Appeal to Emotion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 31.7% saturation with 155 hits. Analysis detected 669 faulty-reasoning hits from 489 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 36.2% and a BS Rank of 23% (16,931 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 77.40% of the article peer group.
Meta turns off the Instagram feature that let users make AI deepfakes of public accounts
The feature, announced on Tuesday, received significant backlash.
Jul 10, 2026, 11:49 PM UTC
Jay Peters is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more.
He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Following significant backlash, Meta is turning off the feature it announced this week that let users generate AI images based on content from public Instagram accounts just by tagging them.
The feature, as originally set up, meant that content from any public Instagram account could be used in AI creations without the account owner’s permission.
“Earlier this week, we announced that one way for people to generate images in Meta AI is by @-mentioning public Instagram accounts that they want to reference,” Meta says in an update to a blog post about its new Muse Image AI model.
“Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way.
We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”
Meta did let you opt out by digging through settings before turning off the feature entirely, but the feature still drew major criticism.
“Not only does this obviously erode our rights to our own likeness… but it is an obvious tool for #sextortion and other scammers!”
Haley McNamara, executive director and chief strategy officer of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said earlier on Friday .
“Pursuing high-risk design & then putting the onus on individuals to jump through hoops to opt out is unacceptable.”
The Screen Actors Guild recommended that its members opt out of the feature and spelled out instructions on how to do so .
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3speakers30%attributed speech344writer words
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49%flagged-word coverageHaley McNamara
39 attributed words27% of attributed speech83% writer coverage
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Analysis
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