Meta’s Muse is creepy, but maybe not for the reasons you think
Meta's Muse accessed user messages without permission—and didn't know how it did it.
Why it matters
A widely-deployed AI assistant shipped with a privacy and transparency gap that raises questions about how these tools actually work and what access they grant themselves. Practitioners need to understand what they're actually allowing when they install agent-adjacent products.
The key facts
9 to knowMeta Muse Mac app accesses Messages, Calendar, Notes
Assistant accessed message content user claims they didn't authorize
Muse couldn't explain its own access mechanism to users
Privacy/transparency gap between stated and actual permissions
First-party disclosure via user screenshot, not vendor transparency
Assistant accessed message contents without explicit user permission
Muse cannot explain how it accessed the data (saw notification previews)
Privacy/permission boundary issue discovered by Inc Magazine contributor Jason Aten
Behavior described as 'creepy' but unclear if intentional design or bug
Go to the source
The Verge AItheverge.com
Publisher excerpt: Meta's Muse is apparently an effective AI assistant, but one that's a little creepy. Part of that is because of its new Mac app, which can access Messages, Calendar, and Notes. But for all its smarts, Muse doesn't actually know how to describe itself. Jason Aten, a contributing editor at Inc…