Meta’s Muse AI assistant, part of the company's broader AI offerings, has raised privacy concerns after its new Mac app was found to have access to users’ Messages, Calendar, and Notes. The issue came to light when Jason Aten, a contributing editor at Inc. Magazine, shared screenshots on the social platform Threads showing an interaction with Muse. In the exchange, Aten questioned how Muse had knowledge of a conversation he was having in Messages, despite not granting the AI access to his messages. Muse responded by saying it had only seen notification previews and had not actually read his texts. Aten continued to probe how Muse was receiving these previews, and the AI admitted, “Honest answer: I can’t give you the exact plumbing,” while explaining that the Mac app allows notifications to be shared through device synchronization. The AI noted that this method was “not great” from a privacy standpoint. The exchange sparked concerns about how much data the AI could access and whether users were being adequately informed about the extent of that access. David Singleton, a researcher from Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, responded to Aten’s post, clarifying that Muse requires explicit permissions to access messages, including granting the Mac app full disk access. He emphasized that these features are opt-in and that Muse does not actively monitor notifications on a user’s Mac. Instead, data from Messages is synced only after a user specifically enables access. Singleton explained that the confusion stemmed from Muse’s inability to clearly articulate how its features worked, rather than from any intentional misuse of user data. Meta has since apologized for the misleading response from Muse and stated that it is working to improve the AI’s understanding of its own functionality. The company aims to provide more consistent and accurate explanations about how Muse operates and what data it can access. The incident highlights the ongoing challenges of ensuring transparency and user control in AI systems that increasingly integrate with personal data.