Did Muse read private texts without permission? Meta says it couldn’t.
Meta's Muse is supposed to help with your digital life. But a dispute over its access to private messages raises a basic question about exactly how much users are letting it see. In a Sept. 19 column for Inc. , tech writer Jason Aten said he installed Muse on his iPhone and Mac and asked it to research his background and suggest ways it could help. Later, he said, the agent suggested a story idea based on a private text conversation with his podcast co-host, Stephen Robles, about the new iPhones. It also flagged a message from his editor about a deadline. "I never gave it permission to read my messages," Aten wrote. He said he remembered explicitly declining access to his messages, calendar, and other personal information during setup. So he asked how it knew what he was texting. Muse claimed the Mac app was passing along incoming notification banners. "It’s the incoming notification stream only, not access to your texts," the agent told him, according to Aten....
