News

Israelis Have Successfully Grown Mouse Embryos In Artificial Wombs

Published

5 years ago

March 24, 2021

israelis have successfully grown mouse embryos in artificial wombs

Weizmann Institute Of Science

Thanks to the work of a group of Israeli scientists, we’re one step closer to being able to grow human babies in artificial wombs. The scientists, led by Professor Jacob Hanna, have successfully extracted 250 embryos from pregnant mice and placed them in a contraption designed to simulate the uterine wall and give the embryos the right conditions to grow.

“We have grown hundreds of mice in this way, in a method that has taken seven years to develop, and I’m still captivated every time I see it,” said Hanna, who works at the Weizmann Institute of Science, a public research university in Rehovot, Israel. “This could be relevant to other mammals, including humans, though we acknowledge that there are ethical issues related to growing humans outside the body.”

Hanna and his team have revealed their breakthrough in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, a multidisciplinary publication known for publishing the finest research from a variety of academic disciplines.

Previous experiments of this kind involved fetuses with already developed organs, such as when the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia grew fetal lambs for over four weeks in artificial wombs back in 2017. The Israel-based team started with five-days old embryos consisting of just 250 cells, placing them into a special liquid to provide nourishment.

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“By day 11, they make their own blood and have a beating heart, a fully developed brain. Anybody would look at them and say, ‘this is clearly a mouse fetus with all the characteristics of a mouse.’ It’s gone from being a ball of cells to being an advanced fetus,” explained Hanna.

While this experiment certainly invokes unsettling scenes from the movie Matrix, with machines growing humans in massive quantities to extract electricity from their bodies, scientists are still a long way from applying the research to create life outside the human body. It’s even possible that the ethical issues surrounding such research will lead to its bad, or at least a heavy regulation.

News

Meta’s New AI Tool Builds Images From Public Instagram Photos

Muse Image lets anyone generate AI visuals from your public posts, unless you find the opt-out that’s buried in your account settings.

Published

8 hours ago

July 9, 2026

Nour Nasir

Meta

Meta has a new AI image generator, and it comes with a feature that has privacy advocates alarmed. Muse Image, launched Tuesday by the company’s Superintelligence Labs division, lets users generate AI images by @ mentioning any public Instagram account — pulling that person’s photos into the creation without their knowledge.

The tool is available through the Meta AI app, WhatsApp, and Instagram Stories. Meta says it “uses advanced reasoning to understand complex prompts, seamlessly blending multiple photos into high-quality creations you can download and share anywhere”. The tagging is the flashpoint: “Tagging a username lets Meta AI use public photos to build a visual that’s ready to post,” the company says. Every public Instagram profile can be used unless its owner has explicitly opted out.

That default has drawn sharp criticism. Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy nonprofit, called the feature “an egregious invasion of user privacy”. “Meta has once again chosen the creepiest possible path,” said J.B. Branch, the group’s director of federal AI governance and technology policy. “People should not wake up to discover their face has become raw material for someone else’s AI experiment”. “Instead of asking for meaningful consent, Meta quietly defaults users into the system and buries the opt-out in account settings,” Branch added. “It’s a playbook we’ve come to expect from a company with a long history of putting its business interests ahead of the public”.

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Despite the concerns, it’s worth noting that private accounts are already protected. Muse Image requires access to public photos, and anyone trying to tag a private profile will be told the account can’t be used. Public accounts, on the other hand, must opt out manually. To do that, users will need to go to their profile, tap the menu in the top-right corner, then Sharing and Reuse. Under “Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and with AI features at Meta,” you’ll find separate toggles for Posts and Reels — switch both off to keep your images and videos out of other people’s AI creations.