Washington, July 11 (QNA) - Meta announced it is discontinuing an artificial intelligence feature launched earlier this week that allowed users to generate images using content from public Instagram accounts, after it drew widespread criticism over privacy concerns.
"Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way," Meta said in a statement.
The company acknowledged, however, that the feature "missed the mark" after receiving extensive feedback from users, privacy advocates and industry groups, prompting its withdrawal.
Meta introduced the feature on Tuesday alongside Muse Image, its first image-generation model developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs. 
Integrated into the Meta AI chatbot, the model can generate and edit images using photos as input, with users able to refine the results through sketches.
The Instagram feature quickly sparked backlash because it relied on an opt-out system, meaning public content could be used unless users explicitly disabled the setting, raising concerns over privacy and user consent. (QNA)