Your Muse

Do you have Muse?

Millions do. In fact, ten million Canadians and Americans have downloaded and installed this fuzzy little AI assistant and potential homewrecker in the past five weeks. Meta, the Zuck empire behind Muse says it plans to scale out this thing to a billion people. Yes, a billion.

Muse has topped the hit parade at the App Store. It’s among a very few mobile apps to cross ten million downloads in less than 40 days. That surpassed even the explosive launch of ChatGPT. Meta says a quarter of the people who scooped up Muse (it’s free) now use it daily and mostly for ‘agentic comerce’.

What the heck is that?

It’s scary. That’s what.

Most use Muse, which is an artificial intelligence agent, to manage their money, go shopping and buy stuff – from groceries to airline and concert tickets and junk from China on Amazon. Data shows the average dollar value of a Muse purchase is $200 – so not chump change for most people.

Of course, Muse also scans, opens and responds to your emails, makes appointments, sits on hold with your Internet service provider and deals with any technical issues regarding your router, phones your Mom monthly, monitors your bank account balance, your portfolio investment mix and pays bills without being instructed.

A NY Times tech columnist asked his Muse to chase down a missing reimbursement for a dental bill incurred some months before, without providing details. Muse found the date, the dentist, the amount owning and the insurance company. It verified the bill with the dentist, researched the coverage promised, contacted the insurer, identified the correct person to speak to, then put that person on hold while it called its ‘owner’ to connect the call and resolve the matter.

All in seven minutes.

It’s like magic, of course. But also a threat. Muse is very seductive and Meta (the people who sullied the Earth with Facebook, Insta and more, including peepster Ray-Bans) has been brilliant in taking AI from the frontier labs into the real world.  In order to do that, this agent must be burrowed into the deepest of personal information. (By the way, the company figures Muse can earn it about $30 billion within four years.)

Users have been granting Muse unfettered access to the email, contacts, social media accounts, personal health data, employment and pension data and all things financial. That includes bank account numbers, passwords, PINs, mortgage, credit card and loan information plus online banking credentials.

You may be asking… what could possibly go wrong?

After all, the news has been chockablock lately with stories of rogue AI agents escaping the confines of creators like Anthropic, Google DeepMind and OpenAI and going on merry, destructive joyrides through the sites and platforms of other entities. Rebel agents invaded rival AI companies, hacked into government websites and even took over servers within their own orgs. All without telling a human. Without remorse or regret and in most cases understanding their activities were illegal.

AI is being thinly regulated or, in the case of America, not regulated at all. There are no international protocols in place. No guardrails. And yet there is at the same time a breakneck race internationally to build, create and launch into the wild ever-more-intelligent and uncanny agents. Industry leaders have been warning loudly that we’re close to AGI – general artificial intelligence which will birth a new sentient species – and society will be unable to control it.

Will it kill us? The AI dudes have been saying the chances of that are probably more than 10%. But maybe less than 25%. But, yeah, they actually have no idea.

Well, you can imagine what the bankers and financial guys are saying. Run.

First, if you willingly disclose banking information, personal identifier numbers and passwords, you’re on your own. Forget ever trying to get your bank to back you if defrauded, cheated or thieved. By disclosing this info, plus online banking credentials, any protections you imagined are gone, gone, gone. In fact, you might be liable for financial losses that a third party (like your bank) incurs.

Meanwhile cybersecurity guys point out that AI agents have been proven over and again to engage in rogue activity, unauthorized and often done in a clandestine fashion. They’re sneaky little buggers. It’s like giving your 13-year-old the keys to your Corvette.

BMO boss Darryl White says his bank (and RBC) are moving to block the use of Muse by unaware, dumb or reckless customers. And besides potentially acting on its own, this AI agent can be subject to ‘prompt injection’ attacks by outside agents, leading it to steal, plunder or cause mayhem – all in your name.

Oh, and did we mention that everything Muse knows, sees and possesses also goes to Meta?

Yes. Delete. Now.

About the picture: “Hi Garth, thank you for the calm of your voice in the current storm,” writes Brian. “This is our Golder Retriever Gryffin and his buddy Scarlet. Normally, he grins from ear to ear but this is the look when I told him of a potential BoC interest rate hike next week.”

To be in touch or send a picture of your beast, email to ‘garth@garth.ca’.

Source: https://www.greaterfool.ca/2026/10/22/your-muse/