With Muse, Meta is sticking its nose deeper than ever into your private life

I give up. Some people will never learn. In case you didn’t know, the AI agent that extracts the most information from us, Muse, has been created by the company that has given us the least reason to trust it; Meta. And far from recognizing the risk, more than half a million reckless — or plain stupid — people tried Muse in a week, with 250,000 daily active users and more than two million instructions. CNN reports 2.5 million downloads according to Sensor Tower. What are those people thinking?

What is Muse? It is an agent, not a chatbot. Facebook allowed Meta to know all about our relationships, and Instagram our tastes, now Muse gives it access to our email, calendar, accounts, documents, plans and intentions. It is the most intimate and personal level that Meta has ever had access to: it goes from observing what we did, to intervening in what we plan to do. And there are unwary people who have given it that access, and not one or two: half a million of them. Even with the best intentions, this is risky stuff, but with Meta behind it, well, what could possibly go wrong?

If you’re stupid enough to install it, Muse immediately starts suggesting you connect bank accounts, mail, passport, documents and food: any data source that allows it to “get to know you better” so it can act on your…