Meta’s Muse opens explicit AI chat as adult creators cite restrictions

Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton told WIRED that a private conversation between an adult and an individual AI agent in an app limited to people 18 and older is different from advertising or promoting services on a social network. Muse can generate explicit text, but not images or video.

The app works as a chat with a digital assistant. Users can grant it access to personal information such as calendars and email, allowing it to offer help proactively—for example, canceling a workout that conflicts with dinner. Muse was the first continuously available AI agent to move beyond its initial circle of users in San Francisco. Meta’s large Instagram and Facebook audiences helped it reach the top of download charts in its first month, introducing millions of people to AI agents.

Meta has said it will not “block lawful adult behavior.” That permission, however, applies to conversations with Muse, not to adult content posted by people on Instagram.

A different rule for people

Adult creators point to a broader inconsistency: some US platforms allow sexual content, while Instagram moderation often limits it. X remains a popular place for OnlyFans creators to find subscribers and talk with fans. Many also moved to Bluesky after Elon Musk acquired the platform, formerly known as Twitter; Bluesky allows adult content too.

Jiz Lee, an OnlyFans creator who has worked behind the scenes in queer porn for years, says Instagram has flagged and removed their posts. Lee sees the disparity as part of a wider pattern affecting queer and transgender people, whether or not they make adult content.

“We’re already seeing AI being allowed to do more than people could get away with,” Lee said.

Lee links many cases of online censorship to FOSTA-SESTA, which President Donald Trump signed in 2018. The law affected platforms’ protections under Section 230, after which many sites began restricting adult content. Lee argues that decriminalizing sex work would prevent many of these problems and cases of censorship.

The platforms where creators promote their work are therefore both essential and frustrating. Tony Genius, an OnlyFans creator and adult-film performer, says he has gone through seven Instagram accounts in five years. At awards ceremonies, he says, advertisements for AI agents are met with loud disapproval. He worries that fully AI-generated pornography could eventually displace people in the industry, even as current AI tools can help independent creators market their work—for example, by automatically cutting videos for social media.

The questions around Muse

Lee wants to know what data was used to train Muse and whether anyone was compensated for its use. The adult-content industry has been slow to address those questions, Lee says, but companies are increasingly spelling out in contracts how AI may be used. Lee wants performers protected from having their data added to training sets without consent.

The announcement’s quietest issue may be the one creators care about most: not what Muse can say, but whose material helped make it possible. Meta’s distinction between private AI chat and social-network promotion explains its policy line; it does not answer Lee’s questions about training data or compensation.

Genius, by contrast, is open to working with a technology company on an AI version of himself that fans could chat with. He wants performers to keep earning and not be excluded from the industry—or used to train AI on unfair terms. For now, he says, human nature and authenticity still matter to building a connection with an audience.

Genius also asks why Meta made Muse available only to people over 18 but has not, as far as he can see, created a separate social network for adults. His suggested name: Instacam.

Vanniall takes the opposite position. She urges people not to download Muse or give Meta more money and personal data, arguing that the company already has enough.

Meta has made explicit AI chat available at mass scale, but creators are left with two unresolved choices: whether to make a place for themselves in that market, or to resist a system whose data practices they do not trust.