Meta Launches Muse, an AI Agent That Can Act on Your Behalf

Meta Launches Muse, an AI Agent That Can Act on Your Behalf 

Imagine telling an AI:

“Book my trip, send the emails, lower my bills, and buy what I need.”

Then closing your phone and letting it handle everything.

That is the future Meta is betting on with Muse, its new personal AI agent.

But there is a catch.

For Muse to be genuinely useful, you have to give it access to some of the most personal parts of your digital life. And that raises a much bigger question than “How smart is the AI?”

Can people actually trust Meta enough to let AI act on their behalf?

Meet Muse: AI that does not just answer; it acts

Meta introduced Muse on September 8, describing it as a personal AI agent designed to actually get things done, rather than simply answer questions. Powered by Muse Spark, Meta's latest AI model, Muse can handle tasks such as sending emails, booking travel, filling out forms, creating plans, and even making purchases.

It can also work across services such as email, calendars, shopping, health and fitness, smart-home tools, and other everyday apps. And unlike a normal chatbot, Muse can keep working after you close the app. That is the interesting part.

You do not necessarily have to sit there telling it what to do step by step.

Give it a goal, and Muse can create a plan and work through it.

It can even shop for you

This is where things get really futuristic.

Meta says Muse can make purchases using Link by Stripe, with a one-time-use card designed to keep your real payment details hidden. It can also ask for your approval before sensitive actions such as sending an email or buying something.

So instead of:

You → Search → Compare → Click → Pay

the future could look more like:

You → Tell Muse what you want → Muse handles the rest.

Meta says Shopify's Shop Pay and 1Password integrations are also coming.

But here comes the trust problem

Muse needs access to your digital life to be useful. And Meta knows that is a huge ask.

The company says Muse runs inside its own Muse Secure VM, essentially a dedicated virtual computer containing the agent and the user's data. Meta also says a separate security system called Sentinel monitors what Muse does online and can block actions unless they are approved.

The company claims Muse cannot see users' passwords or payment details, and users can choose which services to connect and disconnect them whenever they want.

Later this year, Meta says it plans to introduce Confidential VM, designed so that even Meta cannot access the encrypted contents of a user's Muse environment.

Sounds reassuring.

But this is Meta we are talking about. And that is where the timing gets interesting.

Meta is asking for trust at a complicated moment

Just days before Muse launched, Meta was still dealing with the fallout from an up to $18 billion settlement involving claims from 29 U.S. states over children's safety on its social platforms.

Meta did not admit wrongdoing, but the settlement includes major changes to how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram.

So Meta is now essentially saying:

“Trust us with even more of your personal information this time; we will let AI act on your behalf.”

That is a much bigger responsibility than recommending a Facebook post or showing you an Instagram Reel. If Muse can read your calendar, interact with your email, shop online and make decisions for you, one mistake could have real-world consequences.

Reports say internal testing found security and reliability problems before launch, which may help explain why Meta delayed Muse's original release while it worked on safety measures.

The bigger AI race has changed

Muse is part of a much bigger shift happening across the AI industry. AI companies are moving from assistants that tell you what to do to agents that do it for you. That is a major change.

ChatGPT helped make AI assistants mainstream.

Now companies like Meta are asking:

What if AI did not just give you the answer; what if it completed the entire task?

That could save people enormous amounts of time.

But it also means we are moving toward a world where AI needs access to increasingly sensitive information. And eventually, the most important AI feature may not be intelligence.

It may be trust.

For now, Muse is rolling out in the U.S. on iOS, Android, and the web, with WhatsApp access and AI glasses integration included. Most users can start on the free tier, while Meta is offering $20/month Power and $100/month Maximum plans for heavier use.

The technology is impressive.

The bigger experiment, however, is whether people will actually hand over the keys to their digital lives. Because building an AI that can do everything is one challenge.

Getting humans to trust it enough to let it do everything is another.