Muse Creates Detailed Profiles of All Your Friends and Family

THE NEWS

What happened

Meta's AI agent Muse is creating detailed profiles of users' friends and family by analyzing their data, raising significant privacy concerns. Researchers extracted internal files showing the system compiles information on relationships, shared history, and suggests ways to strengthen bonds.

CONTEXT

Why it matters

Meta's AI assistant Muse has sparked privacy alarms after researchers discovered it builds detailed profiles of every person in your life. The system analyzes your data to understand relationships, track shared history, and even suggest how to improve connections with friends and family. While Meta claims this transparency helps the agent be more useful, experts warn that we are giving AI systems far more information about our personal lives than we receive in return.

AT A GLANCE

Key facts

• Independent researcher Karan Joshi extracted Muse's internal instructions revealing it creates a dedicated page for every person in a user's life.
• The system compiles data on family, partners, friends, and colleagues to infer relationship dynamics and shared history.
• Muse suggests specific actions like 'a reason to call' or 'a date worth remembering' to strengthen relationships based on inferred details.
• Meta maintains the feature is designed for transparency and uses a dedicated virtual machine per user with audit logs.
• Experts warn that AI systems are now soliciting vast amounts of personal data, leading to a 'ballooning' of what companies know about users.