Mark Zuckerberg attends UFC Freedom 250 at the White House on June 14, 2026 in Washington, DC.
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Meta published Tuesday Muse Image, a new artificial intelligence image-making model as the company seeks to attract creators and advertisers to its offerings.
Originally named Mango, the AI technology marks the second major release from Meta Superintelligence Labs led by Alexandr Wang, who oversaw the April unveiling of the Muse Sparkle great model of language which succeeded that of the company previous Llama model family.
Muse Image will be available to consumers for free through the Meta AI app and website, WhatsApp direct messages and Instagram Stories. Power users and creators should sign up for one of the new monthly subscription plans which debuted in May to create many AI-generated images and access certain features. If users reach their free limit, they can purchase a Meta One subscription or wait for their limit to reset, the company said.
Muse Image will also power advertiser-specific image generation tools as part of Meta’s AI-powered Advantage Plus service which makes it easier for brands to develop ad creative for their marketing campaigns and automate certain tasks. Meta said it was working with businesses and advertisers as it launched Muse Image.
“Muse Image brings native reasoning to the creative process to adjust elements, swap styles, and create variations based on the advertiser’s creative, resulting in high-quality, on-brand ad variations with fewer iterations,” the company said in a blog post for businesses. “In the coming weeks, advertisers and agencies can expect to see variations of images powered by Muse Image.”
Read more CNBC tech newsThe new image generation model and efforts to monetize it show how Meta is trying to develop its core business online advertising and generate new sources of income linked to its heavy expenditure on AI-related infrastructure.
OpenAI And Alphabet took a step ahead of Meta in offer Similar image generation models, with Google Nano Banana become a hit by consumers when it was released last fall.
Meta also revealed internal benchmarks showing that Muse Image lagged behind OpenAI’s latest GPT Image 2 model, but beat the Nano Banana 2 model in tasks like single and multiple image editing.
The social media giant has previously used third-party AI models like Midjourney and Black Forest Labs to power various image and video generation features in its Meta AI app and site. The company said it plans to use its new AI model to reduce its reliance on similar third-party technologies.
Meta also plans to later release an AI video generation model called Muse Video, adding in a tech blog that it “delivers competitive performance in rapid adhesion, visual fidelity, and temporal consistency.”
Muse Image will be available on Facebook and Messenger as well as other areas of the Instagram and WhatsApp services later this year.
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