Just when it seemed the creeping presence of technology into our daily routine couldn’t get any worse, Meta has launched Muse, a new way for AI to take control of your life.
Described as “The World’s First Personal AI Agent Built for Everyone”, Muse looks to be an hybrid work and home life AI assistant for everyone, even those lacking technical expertise, offering everything from making recipes and shopping lists to work-related tasks such as managing your calendar.
Except let’s be honest, it probably do anything like that – because that’s not how real everyday life and work is, is it – so is Muse already over-promising?
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Looking through the list of things Muse says it can do, and its promise that it was “built to work for billions of people worldwide”, is another reminder that a lot of new AI innovations and services are often built by people who don’t understand how the real world works.
Tools such as monitoring a smart home and planning the next big holiday might be fine for a Silicon Valley based worker who drives an hour to the office and back, but for those of us outside the bubble, it’s all a bit much.
When it comes to the business and work-focused tasks, it again seems like there’s a lack of basic understanding.
Mark Zuckerberg has said Meta needs to create more accessible agents for people, with the likes of OpenClaw just too advanced for the bulk of Meta’s users across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Muse will let users draft and send emails (always a bit of an iffy area with AI agents) although it does say the agent will ask for approval before sending anything – but it also has bigger plans it helping spur on bigger projects or plans.
Meta says Muse can help with “turning long-term goals into action plans” – and will even work behind the scenes, even when the app is turned off, to move forward on this.
Muse, which comes with its own dedicated apps and website, can handle complex tasks and work independently, Meta says, noting that “once a person shares a goal with Muse, it helps them develop a personalized plan and coordinate their time and resources, then advances the work on its own.”
Whether it’s the aforementioned holiday plans or fitness goals, all the way up to starting a business, Meta seems to see Muse as an always-on assistant and co-worker, but surely this takes away from the feeling of actual achievement?
Time is running out
Meta also makes a big deal out of building safety, security and privacy into Muse, perhaps unsurprisingly given the current furore around its AI ‘Pervert glasses’, and the amount of data it is asking users to share with its agent.
The company says that personal agents like Muse “need a new kind of secure computer, so Meta built one for everyone”, with the Muse Secure VM supposedly offering “first-of-its-kind privacy, safety, and security protections” built in.
Meta says that, “each person stays in control of their Muse and decides how much access it gets” to their information – but if you’re pumping in data about your daily life and work projects, how far does that really stretch?
Muse can set up its own connections to third-party services if a public API is available, naming the likes of Stripe, Google Workspace and 1Password, which sounds like both a useful efficiency gain and a security nightmare waiting to happen – I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Fortunately, Meta is apparently already anticipating teething issues for Muse, noting in its launch post that, “Muse can and will still make mistakes, but we expect they’ll be much less frequent and cause much less damage due to the safety systems we’ve built in.”
Given Zuckerberg’s well-publicized push to create “superintelligence” (whatever that means) I really hope Meta has bigger plans for Muse, as surely the point of technology such as this is to make our lives better – they just clearly need to talk to some actual people first.
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