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Meta is refuting a journalist\u2019s claim that its AI agent Muse read the user\u2019s private messages without permission. Following an earlier report<\/a> from Inc. columnist Jason Aten that detailed the issue, Meta VP of Communications Andy Stone pushed back<\/a>, making it clear that the company does not believe its product did this without the user\u2019s consent. <\/p>\n \u201cThe Messages integration in the Muse app for Mac is entirely opt-in,\u201d Stone wrote on X in response to the claims made by the piece. \u201cYou have to enable both Full Disk Access and the Messages connector for Muse to be able to read your Messages content. It can\u2019t read your Messages unless you do this.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Meta\u2019s denial, many people are still suspicious that Meta isn\u2019t being truthful.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not surprising<\/a>, given the tech giant\u2019s years of mishandling<\/a> consumer<\/a> data<\/a>, which has led to lawsuits<\/a>, FTC<\/a> violations<\/a>, and fines<\/a>. Just days ago, for instance, a New Mexico jury determined the tech giant had misled users about its data practices <\/a>in a case that resulted from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica<\/a> data breach scandal.<\/p>\n Whether users can trust Muse<\/a> will be a deciding factor in whether or not Meta wins the consumer AI market. Although its app is faring well now,<\/a> and remains No. 1 on the App Store, Meta\u2019s reputation may not recover if more reports like this emerge, true or not. If anything, the company should be engaging with the journalist directly to determine how this could have possibly happened, instead of just denying that it did.<\/p>\n Stone\u2019s official statement from Meta follows a more technical reply<\/a> from Meta Superintelligence Labs executive David Singleton, who responded directly to Aten on Threads, explaining that the set of permissions a user must grant to let Muse read their messages on the Mac involves \u201cthree separate steps of application-level permissions and built-in macOS system-level protections.\u201d He said these \u201ccan\u2019t be circumvented even if the Muse application had a bug.\u201d<\/p>\n The steps involve explicitly choosing to grant Muse Full Disk Access, which would then allow the user to choose what level of access Muse is being granted to the Messages app (i.e., None, Read only, or Read). If Full Disk Access is not enabled, these options are grayed out. <\/p>\n In addition, when allowing Full Disk Access, the dialog invokes the macOS Settings user interface, where the user has to again manually confirm that they intend to take this action. Doing this triggers a full restart of the Muse app, Singleton wrote, which makes it even less likely that such a choice could be made accidentally without the user\u2019s knowledge.<\/p>\n However, Aten\u2019s report claimed that when Muse read his messages, Full Disk Access was off. He also said that when he asked Muse to explain how this occurred, the AI said that it was syncing his \u201cdevice notifications.\u201d That means, Aten believes, that Muse was passing along the text of his incoming banner notifications on the Mac to the AI agent.<\/p>\n Singleton disputed this, too, saying that the AI was confused and gave an incorrect explanation of what happened. He then pointed to Meta\u2019s page about Muse\u2019s security architecture<\/a> and bug bounty process.<\/p>\n In short, the company\u2019s response is essentially that what Aten said happened did not and could not have happened. <\/p>\n This is not the only incident where Muse has allegedly overstepped and won\u2019t likely be the last. Another user, YouTuber Matt Robb, recently said that Muse mishandled<\/a> a task in which he was selling things on Facebook Marketplace, leading to his address being shared and a buyer showing up when he wasn\u2019t even home<\/a>. Singleton is apparently looking into that one, per his response on Threads, suggesting that the company believes this one, at least, could be its fault.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n