katherine douglas

🦔Meta's new AI assistant, Muse, reads your email, messages and Instagram so it can handle chores like grocery orders and canceling subscriptions. TIME went through Muse's internal instructions and found it updates a profile on you every hour. It profiles the people you talk to as well, including folks who never signed up, down to how you met, what you fight about and who sides with whom in your friend group. My Take Meta makes nearly all of its money selling ads. Muse keeps notes on which kinds of reminders and suggestions get you to act, and when. One example in the instructions reads "This user responds better to short nudges after 10 PM." Meta told TIME none of this goes to its ad system, and I believe that today. But Muse is free for most people, and Meta plans to spend as much as $145 billion on AI this year. At some point it wants that money back, and a file on what moves you at 10 PM is worth a lot to an ad company. You can tell Muse to forget something, but that doesn't always erase the original message, and its instructions tell it not to point that out. Your friends never agreed to any of this either. If they mention you to their Muse, you end up in a file. Meta does let users open the notes Muse writes, so if you use it, go read what it wrote about you before you decide whether to keep it. Hedgie🤗 time.com/article/2026/10/06/…