Tag: meta

Meta kills the Instagram tagging feature on Muse Image after criticism

Letting anyone tag Instagram profiles for AI images had some obvious implications. (Picture: Meta)
The feature letting users take content from any public Instagram feed in AI mashups through newly released Muse Image promptly received backlash from concerned users, pressure groups and actors’ unions.

The idea was that you should be able to tag friends, but celebrities instantly started thinking about protecting their livelihoods and likeness — crucial to their success.

Even the National Center on Sexual Exploitation got on with the criticism, saying it was an obvious tool for sextortion and scammers, spotted by The Verge.

The actors union SAG-AFTRA quickly posted a guide to opting out, pointing to toggles deeply buried in the Instagram settings, while the Creative Artists Agency urged Meta to take a more «reasonable» approach and at least make the feature opt-in, instead of free-for-all.

After a tumultuous week online, Meta finally ceded to its critics, putting out this statement:

— 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.

Read more: Updated Muse Image blog post, Deadline, Variety and The Verge.

Meta launches new Muse Spark, a «significant upgrade» on par with frontiers

The new Muse is not just dirt cheap, but sometimes matches the top tiered AIs. (Picture: Meta, generated)
The new Muse Spark 1.1 performs on level with, and sometimes surpasses, GPT-5.5 and Opus 4.8 in benchmarks.

It is specifically built for agents and coding, being able to write, debug and refactor large codebases and add features on the fly.

The agentic capabilities are very competitive, Meta says. It can work with little human intervention and sometimes scores better than Fable on these tasks.

On computer use, Meta claims it understands workflows and can write scripts when it’s faster and work directly when it’s simpler.

Perhaps the biggest selling point is the cost, and just like Grok 4.5 yesterday, competition on price and speed is picking up. Muse Spark 1.1 is only $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million out, and is, as Zuckerberg puts it, at a very low cost.

The new Spark is available in Thinking mode on Meta AI through meta.ai and the app, while U.S. developers can access it in public preview through the new Meta Model API, where there is a waitlist. There is no word on when it is coming to Europe.

Read more: Meta’s presentation, Alexandr Wang’s X post, Zuckerberg’s X post, Axios, Reuters, and CNBC.

Meta launches Muse Image generator, teases video model

A sample from Muse Image, Alexandr Wang as a plushie. (Picture: Meta)
Muse Image catapulted directly to the second place on Arena.ai’s leaderboard in the categories for Text-to-Image and Image Edit, ahead of Nano Banana 2 and just behind GPT-Image-2.

It’s the first image generator from the Superintelligence Lab and pairs with Muse Spark to reason, search the web, and plan before it generates an image.

Meta also says it knows you from your Facebook and Instagram feeds, giving it a layer of contextual awareness, and it lets you tag any Instagram account for inclusion in your images.

The latter is automatically enabled, meaning anyone on Meta.ai can tag your Instagram content in AI generations, unless you explicitly opt out.

Continue reading “Meta launches Muse Image generator, teases video model”

Wang says Meta is catching up to GPT-5.5, Opus with new «Watermelon»

Meta’s new «Watermelon» is coming soon, they promise. (Picture: generated)
Meta’s successor to «Avocado», or Muse Spark, is already in training and uses «an order of magnitude» more power, the head of the Superintelligence Lab, Alexandr Wang, said at an internal meeting.

The model is «coming soon» and will bring «big improvements in coding and agentic capabilities,» he adds in an X post.

The upcoming model has caught up with OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, he said, according to Business Insider, and added later on X that Opus is not far off.

Muse Spark was launched in April and performed sometimes on level with GPT-5.4, launched in March, quickly followed by GPT-5.5.

GPT-5.5 is, however, not the current state of the art any more, that would be Claude Fable or newly launched GPT-5.6, both of which face restrictions by the US government.

This isn’t discouraging the Superintelligence head, saying «I think you’ll like what we have cooking» on X.

Read more: Business Insider, Wang’s X post.

Meta’s AI fallback plan: Forming a cloud computing company

Meta could soon be renting out excess compute, as it continues to build out capacity. (Picture: Adobe)
Already sitting on one of the world’s largest compute clusters with plans to add some $145 billion worth more just this year — Meta is making contingency plans.

Bloomberg (paywalled) is reporting that they are now planning to form a cloud computing company to compete with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, aiming to sell «excess capacity» to paying customers.

The idea is a hedge against overcapacity, Axios reports, quoting Zuckerberg as saying in May: «that is an option that we have, and that is partially what gives us confidence in investing in building this out.»

The new unit would offer raw compute to companies looking to train models, or could offer access to models from other AI labs and rent out the infrastructure to power them. This would be similar to services from Amazon and Azure.

SpaceX, now incorporating X.ai, faced a similar problem when their compute power got bigger than their needs, and struck deals with Anthropic and Google to sell excess compute access, Reuters notes.

It is estimated that Meta currently sits on 20 gigawatts of capacity, and it plans to add another 14 GW over the next years, Axios says.

Read more: Bloomberg (paywalled), Axios, Reuters, CNBC, and Engadget.

Meta AI launches «incognito chat» on Meta and WhatsApp apps

No one can see these chats but you — but what about safety? (Picture: Zuckerberg/Facebook)
Raising more questions than answers, Mark Zuckerberg announced the feature as a means to a perfectly private conversation:

— A completely private way to interact with AI, similar to how end-to-end encryption means no one can read your conversations, even Meta or WhatsApp, he writes on Facebook.

There will be no logs of the conversation anywhere, he promises, and the chat itself disappears «when you exit the session.»

This can of course be handy for avoiding safeguards against self-harm or worse, which could otherwise trigger a human review. These guardrails, or lack thereof, have led to plenty of lawsuits against other AI labs, Mashable notes.

Meta says its chatbots won’t allow harmful prompts or dangerous requests, and that people who repeatedly submit them will be temporarily blocked.

— We’ll all need ways to discuss sensitive topics in ways that no one else can access, says Zuckerberg.

Read more: Zuckerberg on Facebook, Mashable, Reuters, and 9to5Mac.

Meta to record screens, keystrokes, and mouse movements from employees

In the future, agents will do most work at Meta. Current employees will be training them. (Picture: Shutterstock)
US workers for Meta will have to contend with most of their daily work being monitored for the training of future AI agents — in an initiative called Model Capability Initiative, according to internal memos seen by Reuters.

They will now get software installed on their computers to track basically everything they do, and take the occasional screenshot, to help train Meta’s agents, which are currently «struggling to replicate how humans interact with computers.»

This includes the use of keyboard shortcuts, clicking buttons, and using pull-down menus, Reuters says.

The idea is definitely to train their successors, according to Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, who sent a memo to employees on Monday saying that «the vision we are building towards is ​one where our agents primarily do the work and our role is to direct, review and help them improve.»

Just yesterday, OpenAI debuted a tool to take constant screenshots of users’ computers in order to customize Codex to their usage.

Read more: Reuters exclusive, TechCrunch and Gizmodo.

Meta is building a custom, photorealistic AI avatar of Mark Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg will be able to handle a lot of outreach by turning himself into an AI avatar. (Picture: Shutterstock)
The idea is that the new tool can attend meetings, manage interactions, and provide feedback to employees when Zuckerberg is unavailable, according to The Financial Times (paywalled).

The avatar is training on his image and voice, mannerisms, tone, and public statements, writes The Verge.

Meta has been building photorealistic, 3D animated AI characters «for some time,» Engadget reports, but now seems focused on finishing the Zuckerberg character first. Then the technology might appear as a tool for creators on Meta platforms.

Zuckerberg himself has taken a keen interest in creating the avatar, the FT says. The thought behind the avatar is that «employees might feel more connected to the founder through interactions with it.»

Read more: The Financial Times (paywalled), The Verge, and Engadget

Meta introduces Muse Spark, its new bid at frontier-level performance

Muse Spark promises to understand your world and what you care about, likely meaning it’s tightly integrated with your social media. (Picture: Meta)
The new model is available on meta.ai as of today, and will be coming to Meta’s roster of 3.5 billion social media users «in the coming weeks.»

Muse Spark is the first effort of the super expensive Superintelligence Labs, and is the first model released since the Llama models that have been powering Meta since May 2025.

It uses a multi-agent workflow — and Meta says it «understands the world around you,» and can help «with the things that matter most,» meaning it likely has access to your personal social media data, although Meta doesn’t explicitly say so.

The model scores pretty well at benchmarks. Even if it doesn’t quite push the frontier, it manages to beat GPT 5.4 in some cases.

Meta bills Spark as «step one,» with bigger models building on it already in development. «There are certainly rough edges we will polish over time in model behavior,» Meta’s Superintelligence chief Alexandr Wang says.

Read more: Meta’s announcement, Wang on x.com, Zuckerberg on Threads, writeups on Reuters, TechCrunch and The Verge.

Arm releases its first physical silicon chip, the AGI CPU, for agentic inference

Arm says agent workflows are set to rise four times, and their new CPU is tailor made for the process. (Picture: Arm)
Precisely catching the fastest growing trend in AI computing, Arm says its new CPU is tailor made for agent workloads.

Co-developed with Meta, the chip is claimed to deliver twice the performance per rack compared to x86 platforms.

Agentic AI compute is expected to require more than four times the current capacity per gigawatt in data centers, and both Arm and Meta expect the design to iterate across several generations.

The AGI CPU is projected to lift Arm’s revenue by «billions» of dollars, Reuters reports, and has over fifty launch partners, including OpenAI, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Meta.

Read more: Arm presser, Meta presser, product page, Reuters, and The Verge.

Meta postpones launch of «Avocado» model until «at least» May

Meta’s new model can’t beat Gemini 3, and is delayed for more work. (Picture: generated)
After spending untold billions on talent, data centers and chips, homegrown and from AMD and Nvidia, Meta’s new foundational model is found lacking.

Pushing back the launch from «early 2026» is due to performance issues, The New York Times reports — as the model «currently falls between Gemini 2.5 and Gemini 3.»

This falls far behind the Meta Superintelligence Lab’s ambitions of «pushing the frontier,» after working on the new model «for months,» Reuters reports.

— We’re ​excited for people ​to see ⁠what we’ve been cooking very soon, a Meta spokesperson told Reuters.

Apparently, Meta AI has considered «temporarily» licensing Google’s Gemini model to propel their AI products while they wait for their own models to catch up.

Read more: The New York Times (paywalled) and Reuters.

Meta announces new processor generation focused on inference

Meta’s MTIA-chips are supposed to support recommendations and AI for «billions» of people. (Picture: Meta)
Tapping their long-time partner Broadcom, Meta’s new in-house chips are built to scale from recommendation engines to advanced AI workflows.

The new generation Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) isn’t built to replace the chips sourced from AMD or Nvidia, but are intended to supplement them and achieve «the lowest possible price.»

MTIA-chips are taking a different tack on developing AI models, optimizing for inference — the process of answering AI queries — instead of training. Most chips are customized for training, which is more compute intensive, but the majority of a chip’s life is spent putting together answers in production.

— Chip designs are based on projected workloads, but by the time the hardware reaches production — often two years later — those workloads may have shifted substantially, Meta says in their press release.

The new chips «have either already been deployed or are scheduled for deployment in 2026 or 2027,» Meta says — and they don’t disclose just how many of these they are making.

Read more: Meta’s press release. Writeups on Reuters and CNBC.

Ex-Meta chief AI scientist raises $1 billion to build world models

After leaving Meta at the end of 2025, LeCun’s new startup is already raking in the money. (Picture: generated)
Hot off the $1B raise for Fei Fei Li’s World Labs, the former AI boss at Meta, Yann LeCun, is raising as much for his Paris-based Advanced Machine Intelligence.

CEO Alexandre LeBrun notes to TechCrunch that world models are the latest buzzword in AI, but cautions that the startup is doing «fundamental research» and won’t be launching any products «for years.»

LeCun and LeBrun both say that generative AI models work by predicting text or images, and are severely limited when it comes to interacting with the real, messy, and unpredictable world.

AMI sees their clients as being in «industrial process control, automation, wearable devices, robotics, healthcare, and beyond,» according to their front page.

According to Reuters, their technology might show up in Meta’s AI glasses «in the short term.»

Read more: Reuters, TechCrunch and Wired.

WhatsApp tentatively allows AI chatbots competing with Meta in Europe

WhatsApp sets steep prices for rival AI access. (Picture: generated)
As the EU Commission is considering «interim measures» against the messaging app for refusing chatbots not made by Meta, WhatsApp is slightly opening the door to rivals in Europe.

The platform has 3 billion users, and is considered a «gatekeeper» in EU laws, subject to demands for equal access.

The compromise Meta is rolling out is that rival chatbots will be allowed on the platform, but have to pay their way.

The fees range from €0.0490 to €0.1323 for «non-template messages.» That could ratchet up quickly, considering that chatbot sessions cover multiple messages across millions of users, writes TechCrunch.

The European Commission is said to be «analyzing» how this move «might affect its interim measures» as well as the broader investigation, Reuters reports.

Read more: Reuters and TechCrunch.

Meta to purchase 6GW of custom AMD AI chips, take up to 10% ownership

Joining forces with AMD, Meta is set to receive hundreds of thousands of custom inference chips. (Picture: Meta)
According to Reuters, the deal is worth $60 billion, runs over five years, and comes hot on the heels of another Meta deal with Nvidia earlier this month.

The agreement will see the first gigawatt of GPUs and CPUs delivered in the second half of 2026, and includes several as-yet-to-debut rackable chips.

AMD and Meta have long been partners in developing custom chips, but these are specifically built for inference, the process of creating answers for user queries.

— This is an important step for Meta as we diversify our compute, says Mark Zuckerberg on the deal.

AMD entered into a similar deal with OpenAI in October, 2025, meaning it might soon be 20% owned by AI labs.

Read more: AMD press release, Meta’s release, and Reuters report.