Meta's Muse agent hits 2.5M downloads in two weeks, then gets caught using human concierges to make calls
量子位 · wechat · 2026-09-25
Meta made its new personal agent Muse the star of its Connect conference, then a Reuters exposé revealed a human-in-the-loop scandal.
The hype: Muse hit 2.5 million downloads in two weeks, topping the US App Store and far outpacing ChatGPT's early growth (Sensor Tower). Meta shares jumped over 20%, adding $200B+ in market value, a seven-month high.
Connect conference highlights
- Computer Use on Mac: Muse operates desktop apps like a human, continuing queued tasks after you walk away.
- Muse Mail: a dedicated email address so invoices, schedules and to-dos can be forwarded for background handling.
- Realtime avatar: Muse Realtime Avatar plus realtime voice, sub-second audio-video sync.
- Commerce ecosystem: Walmart, Sephora, Best Buy and more added; ShopPay, PayPal, Stripe integrated; the developer connector platform drew 1,500+ applications in under a week.
- Muse Charm: a pocket-sized device with an onboard realtime voice model; 100+ AI glasses options promised by year-end.
- Zuckerberg said Muse stays free despite massive token usage, monetized via small transaction fees.
The scandal: Reuters revealed Muse's "autonomous phone calls" were secretly routed to trained human contractors at a call center (codename human concierge) during testing. Internal posts admitted AI-only call success rates were low while humans reach 95%-98%, raising privacy concerns about exposing user data to outsourced workers. Meta executives apologized, rolled back the feature, and fired the contractors involved. Commenters compared it to Facebook M a decade ago, where 70% of tasks were done by humans.
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