# AI

By [DYLIT Chronicles](https://dylit.info/user/dylitmediabuzz)

[Global Economic Coverage](https://dylit.info/pr/global-economic-coverage/6a6849fd61bb0e07120aa486) > [AI & its Impacts](https://dylit.info/ch/ai-its-impacts/6a6849fd61bb0e07120aa4a2)

Meta's Muse Tops the Charts. Its Appetite for Personal Data Deserves a Closer Look An agent built to act Muse isn't a chatbot in the usual sense. It debuted in early September and is designed to access a person's apps across categories like email, calendar, payments, health, shopping and the smart home. Users tell it what they need, and it takes action using the Muse Spark model that Meta built for real-world agentic work. That promise of handing off the busywork explains the buzz. It's also why the privacy questions are bigger than usual. Number one on the App Store The download claim checks out. Muse overtook ChatGPT as the leading iOS free app in the U.S. and logged over 2.5 million downloads since its debut, according to Sensor Tower. One caveat: rankings varied by tracker, and some placed it fourth or fifth overall. An 11% stock jump, with help The stock move is confirmed too. Meta gained 11.3% to close at $741.25 on Monday, adding roughly $192 billion to its market cap. Muse wasn't the only catalyst, though. The same day, Wells Fargo raised its price target to $796 from $640, citing early demand for Muse. So "contributed" is fair. "Caused" would overstate it. Why critics see a privacy problem Futurism put it bluntly: many who tried Muse were unsettled by how much it dug up on them and how closely it monitored their habits. Processing happens in the cloud, on Meta's servers. Muse runs in a cloud virtual machine where it keeps what you share, with backups. That setup still lets Meta access VM data when needed to operate, support or secure the service, and conversations, tool calls and agent handoffs can be sanitized and used for training by default unless users switch it off. Permissions matter as well. One tester reported that Muse used Mac notification content without clear disclosure. Cross-app reach and personalization at scale Meta's biggest advantage is also the core worry. Scott Galloway noted that Muse draws on a person's existing history with Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Deletion has limits: after you delete something, Muse may still remember what it learned from it. Money flows add pressure, since Zuckerberg says Muse will take a small fee from transactions. And Amazon has blocked Muse from its shopping site, citing privacy and security risks. Multiply a single user's exposure by millions, and any flaw in these systems scales fast. What reduces the risk Meta has built real safeguards. It says Muse doesn't share conversations or VM data with its ad systems, and credentials sit in a secure store so the AI model never sees your password. A planned Confidential VM is designed to keep data private even from Meta. Still, these are product policies rather than cryptographic guarantees until that version ships. What to watch Users should connect only the accounts a task needs, turn off training in settings, and review what Muse remembers. Regulators should push for independent audits of the Confidential VM, clear retention timelines, proof that "sanitized" training data is truly de-identified, and plain disclosure of background data collection. Wall Street sees the same tension. Bank of America analysts wrote that privacy and trust remain key considerations for broader adoption. Sources CNBC: "Meta's Muse AI agent downloads are surging. Here's how it compares to ChatGPT, Grok and Claude" https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/21/meta-muse-personal-ai-agent-downloads.html Yahoo Finance: "Why Muse just added billions to Meta's market cap" https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/why-muse-just-added-billions-to-metas-market-cap-094853229.html Related YouTube Videos CBS News: "Downloads surge for Meta's new AI agent Muse" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM0mxReLT4k Channel not shown in search results: "Why Meta's Muse AI agent is soaring in popularity" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU_EoUpb_BQ