Meta moved into AI big time last month with the launch of Muse, a cute little AI agent, and who can resist the cuddly little help aid that reminds one of Teletubbies.

Meta’s Muse launched September 8, 2026. In the 12 days that followed, it pulled 1.8 million iOS downloads across the U.S. and Canada, according to TechCrunch. ChatGPT managed 1.3 million at the same point in its launch,” noted TechSifted.

Of course, when you own Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, and the adverts are everywhere, are the numbers really so surprising?

“Meta describes Muse as “a secure, private personal AI agent that proactively helps with people’s goals.” That framing is intentional. Muse is not positioned as a chatbot that answers questions. It is an agent that goes out and does things.”

“In practice, Muse can send emails, book travel, open browsers, fill out forms, and negotiate on a user’s behalf. It continues working after the app is closed. It remembers what matters to a user and makes suggestions unprompted. Meta’s example: turning a recipe reel saved on Instagram into a grocery list.

“Meta says Muse requests user approval before sensitive actions, including sending emails or making purchases.”

Are we sure it ends there? Meta has a history of not giving users the whole story. According to Gizbot, “Meta’s Muse May Have a Detailed Page on You, Even If You Never Used It.” It was a tool “designed to make life easier (sound familiar…). It was also called a tool that was built to be a ‘safe, secure, private, and widely available personal AI agent’. However, reports now suggest that Muse may be creating detailed profiles of people who have never used the AI tool themselves.

Wonderful, although ““Creepy” is the word being used to describe…it,” according to Futurism. “To use it, you install it on your device and link it to stuff like your email and bank accounts. Then you set it on a task and it “keeps working while you get on with your day,” Meta says.

“Here’s the real shocker, though: it’s kind of a privacy nightmare. Many who’ve experimented with Muse were unsettled by how much it dug up on them and how closely it monitored their habits.”

“Jason Aten at Inc Magazine wrote about how Muse began bringing up specific details he shared in text messages he’d sent through Apple’s Messages app, despite never giving the AI permission to view them. When confronted, the AI explained that it was watching his notifications to glean his message history. It apologized for this transgression, but wouldn’t — or couldn’t — give him a straight answer on how it’s doing it.”

Shocker? Why would anyone be surprised by anything Meta does, at this stage in the game, and giving Zuckerberg access to your bank account, which Muse requires??? This from a man who wouldn’t even reveal the name of the hotel he stayed it during the 2018 Senate inquiry.

Even creepier, “Meta Is Using Instagram Users’ Photos to Build a Universal Facial Recognition System for Its Hated Smart Glasses, Class Action Lawsuit Claims,” said Futurism in yet another piece.

“When Wired revealed in June that Meta had silently added facial recognition code to the smart glasses — stoking fears that the creepy glasses – rightly dubbed pervert glasses – could be used to identify people on the street based on biometric data — that simmering distaste grew into a major PR disaster for the company.

“Meta has ever since vehemently denied that it was planning on ever releasing the tech, a feature dubbed “NameTag.” That’s despite its CTO Andrew Bosworth happily describing those plans in excruciating detail in public and arguing it would be a “great feature” — mere days after calling Wired’s bombshell reporting “absolutely dishonest.”

Said a Meta spokesperson, ““We’ve been transparent about how we use people’s information to build and improve our AI products,” as is evidenced in their profiling people who aren’t even using Muse and have not opted in.

While it’s true that “The company has a long history of mishandling sensitive user data, settling a class action lawsuit in 2020 over an entirely separate facial recognition system for $650 million. In 2024, it agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle yet another facial recognition data lawsuit in Texas,” are those numbers meaningful at all? Given that “Meta Platforms Will Spend $135 Billion on AI in 2026” according to Yahoo!finance, it’s a drop in the bucket. Collateral damage. Oh, well.

Back to the ‘teletubbies’ logo. Is Meta quietly planning on ensnaring a younger audience? Remember that Meta always plays the long game, and if this is the case, we are far from amused. Onward and forward.