Meta’s Muse AI App Raises Fresh Privacy Concerns Over Contact Data

Meta’s Muse AI app is under scrutiny after security researchers found it can gather detailed information about users’ personal contacts, according to a Wired report. The findings arrive just as the app passes 5 million downloads in the U.S., making Meta Muse AI privacy a growing topic of debate.

What Muse Collects About Your Contacts

Researchers extracted parts of Muse’s underlying instructions, which reportedly direct the agent to build a page for every person in a user’s life. The hourly process covers family, partners, friends, colleagues, collaborators and people the user follows. Muse stores this in “memory,” essentially structured text files. The profiles can include where someone lives, what they do, recurring life events, and key dates such as birthdays and anniversaries. They can also include personal backstory, like a resolved argument or a recent milestone.

Muse is built to advise on health, finances and relationships, which requires far more personal data than Meta’s other apps have collected. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said AI can help people become better parents, friends and partners, and mapping a user’s relationships is central to that goal.

Advertising and Data Risks

Critics point out that Meta earns 97% of its revenue from advertising, so some of these insights could end up in ad targeting. That raises fears of approaches that exploit psychological vulnerabilities. Others worry the data could be used to shape political coverage, keep users hooked on Meta’s apps, or be exposed in a leak.

Meta’s record on data misuse adds to the unease, yet adoption is growing faster than ChatGPT’s did at a similar stage. The company has often countered privacy worries by offering useful features, and it may do so again. As Muse spreads, how it handles the personal details of users and the people around them will be worth watching.