Meta’s new AI agent, Muse, can talk dirty with adult users, and OnlyFans creators, who can’t post a swimsuit photo on Instagram without filing an appeal, would like to know how that’s fair.
Muse is an always-on assistant that works like a message thread. Users text it, give it access to their calendar and email, and it proactively handles tasks, like canceling a workout class that overlaps with dinner. Thanks to the power of Instagram and Facebook, Muse topped the download charts during its first month. The company also says adults can have explicit conversations with it, and explained it wouldn’t “block legal adult behavior.” It’s important to point out that Muse generates explicit text, not images or video like its X counterpart, Grok.
For creators who spend their days fighting Meta’s moderation, this whole situation is frustrating to say the least. Vanniall, a New York City OnlyFans creator, has an Instagram account with more than 100,000 followers that is currently restricted and can’t be viewed without logging in. “There’s always some sort of report or appeal that I’m going through with them,” she explained in a recent interview. When she learned about Muse, she didn’t pull her punches: it isn’t fair that Meta can profit from a sexually active AI agent while real adults can’t engage in “any sort of sensuality or sexuality.”
Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton says there is a distinction between Muse and these content creators. A private, one-to-one chat between an adult and an AI agent on an app restricted to people 18 and older, Clayton said, is “very different” from marketing and promotion on a social media platform. But creators don’t see it that way. Instead, they see a simpler pattern: the machine gets to do what the humans get banned for.
Jiz Lee, who runs an OnlyFans account and has spent years working behind the scenes in queer porn, says AI is already being allowed to do more than humans would get away with. Meta has flagged Lee’s Instagram posts before, and Lee thinks queer and trans people are treated more harshly by big platforms regardless of whether they make adult content. Lee traces much of the censorship to FOSTA-SESTA, the 2018 law that weakened Section 230 protections and sent websites scrambling to purge adult material. If sex work were decriminalized, Lee argues, much of this wouldn’t be happening.
Moderation isn’t the only complaint creators have. Lee also wants to know how Muse was trained and whether anyone whose work or images fed it was paid. The adult industry has been slow to react, Lee says, but more companies are now writing AI stances into official contracts to keep performers out of training data. OnlyFans’ own recently updated terms, which ban using creator content to train AI, are a clear example of this attempt, even if it’s coming late in the AI game.
Then there’s the fear of being replaced entirely by AI. Tony Genius, an OnlyFans creator and porn professional, worries that fully AI-generated porn could someday push out human performers. Yet he admits that he also finds some AI tools useful, like automations that clip videos for social media. He even says he’d consider working with a tech company on an AI version of himself that fans could message. But he wants to make sure humans keep earning and aren’t cut out or trained on without a say. For now, he says, his authenticity is what connects him to fans, and no AI can replace that connection.
Genius is also on his seventh Instagram account in five years, thanks to Meta moderation. He wondered why Meta built an adults-only app for its AI but doesn’t seem interested in an adults-only social network. “It could be: Instacam,” he joked.