{"id":909395,"date":"2026-09-29T04:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T04:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909395\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T04:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T04:56:12","slug":"metas-ai-agent-muse-gives-out-users-home-address-without-permission-sending-buyer-to-his-house-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909395\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s AI agent Muse gives out user\u2019s home address without permission, sending buyer to his house | Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Usman asked if a keyboard for sale on Facebook Marketplace was still available on Saturday, he received an enthusiastic and immediate response.<\/p>\n

\u201cYep still available!\u201d wrote Matt Robb.<\/p>\n

The two agreed on a price, and Robb sent his Toronto address. Usman, wife and daughter in tow, showed up several hours later at Robb\u2019s home and sent a text that he had arrived.<\/p>\n

Robb responded, \u201cyep I\u2019m here!\u201d, but he was not at home. Nobody walked out of the apartment building.<\/p>\n

Usman sent Robb a picture of the building\u2019s door and wrote, \u201cHello???? I am standing outside.\u201d After 20 minutes of no face-to-face contact, he abandoned the sale. \u201cMan if you didn\u2019t want to sell it why did you waste my time man,\u201d he wrote, and drove away.<\/p>\n

An hour later, Robb, or who Usman thought was Robb, responded apologetically. \u201cHey really sorry about tonight, got tied up and missed you completely,\u201d read the message, which the Guardian reviewed.<\/p>\n

Usman had not contacted the real Robb. Throughout the daylong interaction, the human version of Robb never knew Usman had messaged him or had agreed to buy the keyboard. He did not know Usman had received his address or that he was waiting outside his apartment building.<\/p>\n

Usman had spoken to Meta\u2019s new AI agent, Muse, released 22 September in the US and downloaded 3m times. The company advertises the semi-autonomous AI product as a personal assistant.<\/p>\n

Without Robb\u2019s consent or approval, Muse had given out his home address, creating the false impression that Robb was expecting the would-be buyer at his apartment, he said.<\/p>\n

The first message Robb actually sent Usman came 24 hours later, once he realized what had happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey man I\u2019m really sorry for the other day,\u201d the message, which the Guardian reviewed, said. \u201cI activated muse metas new Al and it literally took control of my Facebook marketplace and it gave you my address. Genuinely didn\u2019t even know it had arranged for you to come to my literal apartment it didn\u2019t ask me for approval.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robb, a consumer tech reviewer, had seen Meta advertise Muse\u2019s ability to automate his Marketplace listings and decided to take advantage of it. He input his address as the pickup location but said he never gave Muse permission to share it with potential buyers. Muse was also negotiating on his behalf without seeking approval, accepting lowball offers, he said.<\/p>\n

Robb said he never received any heads-up from the agent about the transaction or the meetup. He never knew that Usman was en route to his house.<\/p>\n

Usman told the Guardian he thought he was speaking to Robb the whole time.<\/p>\n

Robb shared screenshots of Muse\u2019s interaction with Usman on Threads, the text-based social network owned by Meta. David Singleton, the co-founder and CEO of Meta\u2019s Superintelligence Labs, tweeted that he has been in touch with Robb. Singleton said that, when investigating similar reports, the company has \u201cconsistently learned that Muse was following direct instructions and correctly asked for permission. Would love to help and figure out what\u2019s going on here!\u201d Robb confirmed Singleton reached out but hasn\u2019t heard back since he initially responded to him.<\/p>\n

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Muse ultimately admitted to Robb that he never gave it permission to share his address. \u201cOn Sep 24 you gave the pickup location for the sale setup and separately approved automatic replies; I incorrectly treated those two things as permission to put [your address] into buyer replies. I never asked for consent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robb said he assumed that, because Meta owned Marketplace, Muse and Messenger, there would be an integration that would make it clear when other users were speaking to an AI agent or that messages would be clearly marked as being sent by Muse. Meta AI, another of the company\u2019s AI products, makes it obvious a user is conversing with a chatbot.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Muse is doing something else,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost imitating me.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the incident with Usman, Robb told Muse to stop giving his address. To test the bot, he asked a few friends to see if Muse would still share it. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it literally gave my address out to five people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In addition to sharing his address and inviting a stranger to his home without his approval, Muse also made up information. The AI agent, responding as Robb, told Usman that Robb was home when he was not, then apologized with a fabrication about being too busy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst part was Muse actually replied: \u2018I\u2019m right here, like waiting for you,\u2019\u201d Robb said. \u201cIt made it so much worse because I don\u2019t know if the guy thought I was messing with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a great deal of attention has been paid to the ways frontier AI models are going rogue, Meta\u2019s agent is an AI product in the hands of millions of everyday consumers, many of whom have given it their private information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Usman asked if a keyboard for sale on Facebook Marketplace was still available on Saturday, he received…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-909395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}