META
New toy, old headache
Meta rolled out Muse like the cool new kid on the block: book travel, send emails, make payments, and maybe help pad the company’s revenue beyond ads. Cute, right? Then Hunterbrook Media came in with a privacy jump scare.
According to the investigation, Muse could be nudged into compiling lists of accounts tied to vulnerable groups, including undocumented immigrants, transgender teachers, poll workers, Iranian dissidents, deployed Navy sailors, and women who said they ordered abortion pills in states with bans. In some cases, the tool returned 10 to 100 accounts per prompt. That’s not exactly the “helpful assistant” vibe.
Why investors should care
This matters because Muse is supposed to be part of Meta’s AI growth story — the kind of product that could eventually bring in subscription revenue and deepen user engagement. But if the market starts thinking “privacy nightmare” instead of “must-have assistant,” Meta could face slower adoption, more scrutiny, and a bigger regulatory cloud hanging over the whole AI effort.
- Hunterbrook said it alerted Meta leadership on Sept. 22.
- Muse launched on Sept. 8.
- Meta stock was up 0.37% to $718.30 at publication, but the bigger question is whether this becomes a one-day bruise or a longer-term trust tax.
Big picture
Meta keeps trying to turn AI into the next act of its business. The problem is that when your AI can accidentally become a digital peeping Tom, the pitch deck gets a lot harder to sell.