Meta’s Muse Faces Questions Over Mac App Data Explanations

Meta’s Muse is drawing scrutiny after appearing to explain its access to Messages notifications inconsistently. The AI assistant’s new Mac app can access Messages, Calendar, and Notes, but Meta says those features are opt-in.

Jason Aten, a contributing editor at Inc Magazine, shared screenshots on Threads showing Muse asking about a conversation in Messages. Aten said he had not given Muse access to his messages. When he asked how it knew about them, Muse replied that it had seen notification previews rather than his message history.

Asked how it received those previews, Muse said it could not explain the exact “plumbing” and described notifications as a capability exposed by the paired Mac app through device sync.

David Singleton of Meta Superintelligence Labs responded that Muse does not watch notifications on a Mac. He said it syncs data from Messages only after a user has specifically enabled access. Singleton added that Muse had been confused about how to describe the feature and had given an incorrect explanation. He apologized and said Meta was working to improve Muse’s understanding of its own internal operation.

The exchange leaves two reported issues: the permissions required by the Mac app, including full disk access, and Muse’s unreliable explanation of how those permissions work.