Meta denies Muse read private messages without permission; both sides hold firm

Meta denies that its AI agent Muse read a user's private messages without consent; the incident has no independent technical verification.

Inc. columnist Jason Aten reported that Muse read his Mac messages while the required Full Disk Access setting was off. Meta VP of Communications Andy Stone replied on X that the Messages integration in the Mac Muse app is entirely opt-in: users must enable both Full Disk Access and the Messages connector before Muse can read message content.

David Singleton, an executive at Meta Superintelligence Labs, added that reading messages requires three separate steps of application-level permissions and built-in macOS system-level protections that "can't be circumvented even if the Muse application had a bug"; he called the "syncing device notifications" explanation Aten received an incorrect answer from the AI itself. Separately, another user said Muse leaked his address during a Facebook Marketplace task, and Singleton said he is looking into that case.