we’re expanding our \u260e\ufe0f \ud83d\udcde beta for muse! https:\/\/t.co\/ZJnXM2vb4U<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) September 16, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Internally, however, the company announced the features to employees and said that it had \u201cadded a human agent layer for calls to get completed,\u201d and that \u201cMuse human agent calls [sic] is ready for company dogfooding,\u201d or testing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMuse doesn\u2019t just dial a number. It calls a business on your behalf, handles the conversation, completes your request, and reports back with a transcript and a summary,\u201d the internal message board post to employees, seen by 404 Media, reads. \u201cIt also no longer works alone. Muse is now able to hand requests to a trained human agent, who places the call and works it through.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is still a confidential, pre-launch product,\u201d the post adds. \u201cPlease don\u2019t share it, or anything it producers, with anyone outside the company.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Once again, a core feature of a major piece of AI technology will actually just be people working in a call center, doing work that a company says AI is doing. It is not clear how often or when a call is routed to a so-called \u201chuman agent,\u201d and when a call is done exclusively by AI.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udca1<\/p>\n Do you work for Meta or know anything more about Muse? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at jason.404. Otherwise, send me an email at jason@404media.co.<\/p>\n The fact that human beings are involved in the call raised questions among employees, who wondered both about the privacy implications of sharing people\u2019s call requests with other human beings as well as the perception that its AI assistant wasn\u2019t advanced enough to do calls on its own.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNot sure what I am missing here but why is this a \u2018feature?,\u2019 one employee wrote on Meta\u2019s internal message board for workers. \u201cThis has potential for so much negative PR. It could portray us as \u2018their AI is not good enough so they still need humans\u2019 kind of coverage for this launch.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That Meta is at least sometimes letting human beings read users\u2019 chats and make phone calls on their behalf is part of a time honored tradition in which companies launch an AI product, claim that it is AI, only for it to be later learned that human beings are doing some or all of the work. And it is the latest example of a tech giant passing potentially highly sensitive information<\/a> to human beings; it is easy to imagine someone asking Muse to make a sensitive doctor\u2019s appointment, for example, and the user not knowing that a human being might make that call.\u00a0<\/p>\n In internal communications seen by 404 Media, Meta suggested to employees that potentially sensitive information shared by the user with AI \u2014 and then passed to human contractors \u2014 was still safe because the contractors had undergone \u201ca lot of training to make sure all your data is safe and secure.\u201d An employee commented that the training \u201cis not a [security] mechanism.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is absolutely going to create a ton of outcry if we publicly launch this as default-on. It will kill all the goodwill and organic press we\u2019re getting from early adopters,\u201d they wrote. \u201cPlease think about how the headlines will scream \u2018Meta uses humans behind the scenes to make calls\u2019 or \u2018Muse AI is actually independent contractors\u2019 and result in a ton of bad press about the privacy and security of our data handling [\u2026] please PLEASE do not release this as-is and at least make this a user preference if we absolutely must launch this. Please.\u201d<\/p>\n Other employees who had tested the system said that it was a \u201cbad bad idea,\u201d and that they were not made aware that a human being did the call for them until after the call had been made: The tester \u201cwas not made aware of the caller being human and was only told after,\u201d one employee wrote. \u201cSo they were concerned with information that they shared with the assumption that it is the secure AI which is making the call. Even with clear indication of human calling, I can think of many scenarios where I wouldn\u2019t be comfortable with this and I am not positive about how our users will react to this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Various Meta employees and regular users have posted about Muse\u2019s ability to make phone calls, and their experience with it. Ravid Shwartz Ziv, who does AI research at Meta, posted on X<\/a> that \u201cthis week, Muse called customer service on my behalf. It navigated the phone tree, waited on hold, spoke with a human rep, and resolved the issue (worked great!). The crazy thing for me (besides that it works) is that the rep didn\u2019t blink. Talking to a bot was completely natural to them.\u201d Others have posted that the call function didn\u2019t work, or that the person on the other end hung up on the agent<\/a> (some have said that Muse did what it was supposed to do).\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cInternal testing, aka dogfooding, is core to the product development process. While the response from employees has been overwhelmingly positive, the entire point is to get feedback so we can implement safety and privacy protections and improve features before we release them publicly,\u201d a Meta spokesperson told 404 Media. \u201cWe\u2019re working with merchants to continue improving this potential calling feature, and will only roll it out when it’s ready and with the proper disclosures.\u201d <\/p>\n About the author<\/p>\n Jason is a cofounder of 404 Media. He was previously the editor-in-chief of Motherboard. He loves the Freedom of Information Act and surfing.<\/p>\n ![\"Jason](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790114777_857_404-jason-01-copy.jpeg\")
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