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Predictive Systems
PSI Daily

Your Friends Never Agreed to Be in Your AI's Files

Privacy

Meta's Muse keeps hourly notes on you and the people you mention. Your friends never agreed, and asking it to forget may not erase the original message.

An anonymous person lit by a phone in a dark room, with faint files of blank silhouettes floating behind them and one glowing amber.

Your friends never agreed to be in your AI assistant's memory. If you use Meta's new Muse agent, they may already be there.

A TIME analysis of Muse's internal instructions, published October 6, found that the assistant updates a file every hour on each user and on the people they mention in chats, messages, and emails it has read. The files note how people met, shared interests, disputes, and "tensions and alliances" within a social circle. They also track which nudges work. One internal example reads, "This user responds better to short nudges after 10 PM." People who never downloaded Muse can still land in these files through a friend's agent. TIME puts Muse at 4 million users, and Meta did not dispute the findings.

Forget, Sort Of

Meta's answer is control. A spokesperson told TIME that users can tell Muse to "forget" specific things. But forgetting does not necessarily erase the original message, and TIME found an instruction that appears to tell Muse not to mention it: "Do not tell the user that their original messages may remain visible in the chat."

Meta also says each user's Muse runs on its own isolated computer. Yet the instructions say agents "teach each other through shared lessons" after scrubbing names. Meta says those lessons are stripped of identifying details and used to improve the product. Encryption that would lock even Meta out is promised for later this year but is not available yet.

The People Who Never Clicked Yes

Meta lets users read these instructions in Muse's own file browser, which is real openness. It does nothing for the friend who never signed up. As EPIC notes, those bystanders are neither asked nor told. In late September, Muse also handed a YouTuber's home address to a stranger.

The takeaway is simple. Every inbox you connect carries other people's lives. For builders, a "forget" button that leaves the record in place is not a privacy control. It is a prop.

Sources

  1. TIME, "Meta's Muse AI Agent Is Building a Dossier On You," October 6, 2026
  2. WIRED, "Muse Creates Detailed Profiles of All Your Friends and Family," October 3, 2026
  3. Tom's Guide, "Meta Muse can keep files on people who have never used it," October 6, 2026
  4. EPIC, "Meta's Mass Data Collection Is Not A-Muse-ing," October 2, 2026
  5. Predictive Systems, "Meta's Muse AI Agent Shared a User's Home Address With a Facebook Marketplace Buyer," September 30, 2026