{"id":912011,"date":"2026-10-01T08:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T08:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/912011\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T08:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T08:12:09","slug":"meta-wants-people-to-use-ai-agents-to-do-daily-tasks-for-them-heres-why-thats-a-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/912011\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta wants people to use \u2018AI agents\u2019 to do daily tasks for them. Here\u2019s why that\u2019s a problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta wants users to turn to a cute artificial intelligence (AI) \u201cagent\u201d<\/a> throughout the day to carry out common tasks for them, such as booking flights or doing their shopping.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s new Muse agent shot to the top of the app charts<\/a> after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg showcased it at a conference last week. Billed as having \u201cno learning curve\u201d, Muse can order groceries online, call customer service, send emails, book appointments and plan travel on a user\u2019s behalf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Agents are systems which use chatbot-like large language models and reinforcement learning<\/a> to complete tasks and achieve user-designated goals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They have come a long way in the past 12 months, from DIY hobbyist projects<\/a> to more polished personal assistant apps<\/a>, with \u201crogue agents\u201d carrying out some high-profile hacks<\/a> and system breaches<\/a> along the way. Meta\u2019s entry into the field means they are now starting to hit the mainstream.<\/p>\n

Massive spending, second place<\/p>\n

Meta has been trying to find its place in the fast-moving world of AI. In 2025 the company spent US$14.3 billion to bring in entrepreneur Alexandr Wang from Scale AI, then comprehensively rebuilt its internal AI systems<\/a>. All told, the company spent $US72 billion on AI<\/a> and other capital expenditure in 2025, and expects that figure to double<\/a> in 2026.<\/p>\n

The results have been respectable, but not world-beating. According to one popular ranking, Meta\u2019s latest AI model, Muse Spark 1.2<\/a>, comes in third behind the frontier Claude and GPT models from Anthropic and OpenAI.<\/p>\n

That may not matter. Anthropic and OpenAI are chasing professionals and businesses willing to pay for the most capable model for coding, research and analysis. (OpenAI\u2019s recently launched Dots agents<\/a>, for example, target a paying clientele wanting help with business tasks.)<\/p>\n

Meta also plans to offer some pro-grade paid AI services<\/a>, but its bread and butter is something else. In the June quarter, 3.6 billion people used Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp every day<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Those people do not need the smartest model. They need one that is easy and approachable. <\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s Muse Spark model only needs to be good enough to run the Muse agent. The company is promoting Muse as \u201cbuilt for everyone\u201d, including people who lack experience with technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg has said users will soon be able to create a cute anthropomorphic avatar for their Muse agent and video chat with it in real time<\/a>, too. He also unveiled a keychain-sized device<\/a> for talking to the agent without a phone.<\/p>\n

From checking to delegating<\/p>\n

For two decades, Meta\u2019s business model has relied on habit. Notifications, endless feeds and the lure of other people\u2019s approval turned \u201cchecking Facebook\u201d or \u201cchecking Insta\u201d into a reflex.<\/p>\n

Muse is an attempt to build a new reflex. Instead of scrolling, you hand over a chore.<\/p>\n

The design invites attachment. Users can give their agent a name and choose how it looks and communicates<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Every successful transaction builds a little more trust. The settings also let users change how often the agent needs to ask permission before acting<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The keys to everything<\/p>\n

For now, Muse\u2019s reach is limited. It is only available in the US so far.<\/p>\n

It has \u201cconnectors\u201d to link your agent to your email, calendars and consumer services such as restaurant bookings, music and shopping. It cannot log into your bank, or medical or tax accounts. <\/p>\n

However, Meta plans to add more connectors over time<\/a> \u2014 and roll the product out to international markets.<\/p>\n

As people get used to using an agent, they will hand it more tasks and spend more time with it. In the same way social media evolved from actual social networking to an ever-present tool to fill idle moments and manage our moods<\/a>, AI agents may end up managing the vast galaxy of interfaces that govern modern life.<\/p>\n

Muse is also an attempt to head off the threat to Meta\u2019s existing position posed by competing AI agents. If agents take off, they could become users\u2019 main interface with the online world \u2013 and gather even more information about users and their preferences than social media platforms do, which whoever owns the agent could then sell to advertisers.<\/p>\n

A record that invites scepticism<\/p>\n

Meta says privacy is built in to Muse. Each Muse agent runs on its own dedicated virtual machine called Muse Secure VM. This houses both the agent and the person\u2019s data<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Zuckerberg has also promised an optional higher security standard under which even Meta cannot access what is in a user\u2019s agent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s record on data privacy gives reason for doubt. In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that a consulting firm had harvested data from up to 87 million Facebook users<\/a> for political profiling. In 2019, the US Federal Trade Commission imposed a US$5 billion penalty<\/a> on Meta over privacy failures.<\/p>\n

Meta has also been accused of designing its products to maximise the amount of time people, including children<\/a>, spend using them. Earlier this year, the company paid up to almost US$18 billion, without admitting wrongdoing, to settle a lawsuit<\/a> from 29 US state attorneys-general who alleged Instagram and Facebook were engineered to keep teenagers hooked. <\/p>\n

Early signs<\/p>\n

Muse is restricted to over-18s, but raises the same question in a different form. A cute agent with a name that people consult throughout the day could build a stronger habit than a feed.<\/p>\n

Concerns about Muse are already beginning to come up. Users who do not want their interactions used to train Meta\u2019s models must find the data controls and switch that off themselves<\/a>. One journalist reported Muse had read private messages<\/a> stored on his Mac.<\/p>\n

So far, there is little in the way of rules and regulations governing the design or operation of AI agents. There is still time for those rules and regulations to be created \u2013 but once billions of people are relying on one company\u2019s agent to run their lives, the chance to shape how it behaves will have passed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta wants users to turn to a cute artificial intelligence (AI) \u201cagent\u201d throughout the day to carry out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":912012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-912011","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\/912011","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=912011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}