Stop Meta Using Your Instagram Photos for AI
About this QuickTip
That photo of me at the Sydney Opera House? I've never been to Australia. It's an AI fake, and Meta's powerful new image tool means anyone can tag a public Instagram profile and generate images like it, using your photos without asking. In this quick guide I'll show you how to opt out and protect yourself: go to the Instagram app, open Settings, tap Sharing and Reuse, and switch off "Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and with AI features at Meta" for Posts and Reels. It takes seconds. Just note that it's public accounts that are exposed by default, opting out only prevents future images (it won't remove any already created), and the setting is rolling out gradually, so check back if it's not there yet. If this helped, hit subscribe for more simple tips to protect your privacy.
Transcript
So look, Meta, who own Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, have just released a new image editing tool powered by AI. And I think there are some serious repercussions for your privacy. Let's have a look and see how we can turn this off, so they can't use your pictures without your consent.
So here's a photo of me presenting at a conference in front of the Sydney Opera House. The problem is, I've never been to Australia. I've never done that. But that's definitely me in the photo.
Meta, who make Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, have just released a brand new AI image editing tool. And it's incredibly powerful, but perhaps scarily, it also works via your Instagram account. So, you can just tag someone's Instagram and it will take their photos and turn it into something like this, which isn't real, but looks pretty close.
Luckily, there's a way to turn this feature off so that Meta can't use all of your data on Instagram to create AI images of you without your consent. I've turned mine off already.
So to do this, jump into the Instagram app and tap onto Settings. From here, you're looking for the option called Sharing and Reuse. And you want to switch off some toggles on this page. Scroll down a bit and you're going to see the option here to allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and AI features at Meta. Nice punchy little title there. But you want to turn that off for Posts and for Reels.
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Technical details: This QuickTip was recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro Max running iOS 27 in July 2026.
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