Meta Finally Fires Back at Nano Banana 2 With Muse Image

For months, Meta rented other people's image models. As of Tuesday, it finally has its own, and honestly, it's not just a slapped-on wrapper.

Muse Image is the first visual model out of Meta Superintelligence Labs

Built by Alexandr Wang's research division, Muse Image follows instructions faithfully, edits with precision, and composes from multiple references, drawing on Instagram for social context. Originally codenamed Mango, it operates as an agent rather than a simple prompt-to-pixel machine, invoking search and coding tools to self-refine its own generations.

It's the lab's second major release after Muse Spark in April, which replaced Meta's Llama family as its in-house text model. Meta is closing the gap one model at a time, and it shows.

Where does Muse Image land against ChatGPT and Nano Banana 2?

Meta's own internal benchmarks put Muse Image behind OpenAI's GPT Image 2, but ahead of Google's Nano Banana 2 on editing tasks involving single and multiple photos. Third out of four isn't a crown, but it's a real jump from the third-party tools Meta used to license, including Midjourney and Black Forest Labs.

The model is free inside the Meta AI app, on meta.ai, in Instagram Stories in the US, and on WhatsApp in select countries, with advertisers getting access through Advantage+. One feature is already stirring debate: users can @-mention public Instagram accounts to pull those photos into generated images, a setting enabled by default that people can opt out of.

Muse Video is a preview, not a product yet

Meta also previewed Muse Video, built on the same pretraining base with native audio support. On the Arena leaderboard, Muse Video reportedly ranks No. 3 in human-preference Elo for text-to-video, though Meta itself flags gaps in audio-video sync and fast motion accuracy.

No public release date exists yet for Muse Video, unlike Muse Image which is already live. Much like ByteDance's Seedance 2.5, AI video keeps proving to be the toughest format to nail in 2026.

Is Muse Image free to use?

Yes, Meta says Muse Image is free for everyday creation, with higher usage limits available through the Meta subscription plans that launched in May.

When will Muse Video be available?

Meta has only previewed Muse Video so far and has not given a public release date, saying it is coming soon to creators and Meta AI.