NO THANK YOU: Meta launches AI agent that can access other apps to send emails, make payments.

Modeled on the open-source AI agent OpenClaw, Muse is designed to access a person’s apps across categories like email, calendar, payments, health, shopping and the smart home, Meta said. People choose which apps it connects to and can revoke access at any time.

Each Muse agent runs on its own virtual machine, a cloud-based emulation of a personal computer, which enables it to keep carrying out requests in the background even when a person is not actively using it.

Syncing up with apps containing a person’s real data both increases the agent’s potential usefulness and significantly raises the stakes for safety, both for the people who have entrusted it with their information and for others who may be on the receiving end of agent misbehavior.

Vishal Shah, vice president of AI products at Meta, told Reuters the company had initially delayed the release of the product in April to make it more secure.

But the whole point is to give it access to your files and even your payments. Much as I love my AI tools, I keep them safely inside their sandbox.