This Meta AI agent can apparently read your iMessages without your permission

What was that saying about what would happen if one gazes too long into an abyss? Well, the abyss is already gazing back into you. And it reads your private iMessages without permission.

Then, to top it off, it tries to deny any wrongdoings.

The abyss in this case is Meta's new AI agent: Muse.

Modern times

Inc.'s Jason Aten (tech columnist and journalist) tells a chilling story about Muse. Meta's new AI agent sounds impressive on paper, as it is designed to interact with your digital life, potentially researching topics, working with apps and even shopping on your behalf.

After installing Muse on an iPhone and Mac, Jason Aten initially gave it a spin with a simple task like writing a short bio about himself and suggesting ways it could help with his work. Muse came up with ideas such as researching article topics, finding podcast guests and preparing a personalized morning briefing.

The "fun" begins

The problem appeared when Muse sent a notification suggesting an ongoing conversation between Jason and his podcast co-host about the new iPhones would make a good article. It even referenced a message from his editor about having a column ready.

The user says he had never given Muse permission to read his messages and had specifically chosen not to grant access to Messages, his calendar and other personal information.

Explanations (sort of)

When asked how it knew about the conversation, Muse claimed it wasn't reading message history. Instead, it said the Mac app was simply receiving the text displayed in incoming notification banners and couldn't access the Messages database.

That explanation turned out to be questionable. Further investigation by Aten showed that Muse had synced data from the Mac's local Messages database, reaching at least row 187,462. Whatever the exact number of messages involved, that goes considerably beyond simply seeing notification previews.

The fine line

OK, we've long given up on real anonymity with our digital lifestyle choices. Almost everything we do is recorded—what we buy, when we buy it, where we buy it, the things we look at but don't buy, et cetera.

But there's a fine line between this and our private messages (some would say if something is on the web, it can't be truly private to begin with). And, to make it a bit more cynical, there's (potentially) a difference between a human agent reading your messages and a software algorithm (a.k.a. an AI agent).

Or is there?

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