Meta enters AI image model race in bid to court advertisers and subscribers

Mark Zuckerberg looks on during UFC Freedom 250 at the White House on June 14, 2026 in Washington, DC.

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Meta on Tuesday released Muse Image, a new artificial intelligence model for creating images as the company seeks to attract creators and advertisers to its offerings.

Originally codenamed 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 Spark large language model that succeeded the company's previous Llama family of models.

Muse Image will be available for consumers to access for free via the Meta AI app and site, WhatsApp direct messages and Instagram Stories. Power users and creators must sign up for one of Meta's new monthly subscription plans that debuted in May to create many AI-generated images and access certain features. If users hit their free limit, they can purchase a Meta One subscription or wait until their limit resets, the company said.

Muse Image will also power advertiser-specific, image-generation tools as part of Meta's AI-powered Advantage Plus service that lets brands more easily develop ad creative for their marketing campaigns and automate certain tasks. Meta said it's been working with businesses and advertisers as part of debuting 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 image variants powered by Muse Image."

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The new image-generation model and efforts to monetize it show how Meta is trying to expand from its core business of online advertising and generate new revenue sources tied to its hefty spending on AI-related infrastructure.

OpenAI and Alphabet got a head start over Meta in offering similar image-generation models, with Google's Nano Banana becoming a hit with consumers when it was released last fall.

Meta also revealed internal benchmark tests showing Muse Image trailing OpenAI's latest GPT Image 2 model but beating the Nano Banana 2 model in tasks like editing both single and multiple images.

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 within its Meta AI app and site. The company said it plans to use its new AI model to reduce reliance on similar third-party technologies.

Meta also plans to release an AI video generation model dubbed Muse Video at a later date, adding in a technical blog that it "offers competitive performance in prompt adherence, visual fidelity, and temporal consistency."

Muse Image will be available on Facebook and Messenger as well as more areas within the Instagram and WhatsApp services later in the year.

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