Last week, Meta executives announced that its much-hyped AI agent, Muse, had a new feature: It could call businesses for you to do things like make a restaurant reservation or a haircut appointment.
uncertain
you → announce → reservation
But in reality, Meta is testing having these calls being made by human beings in call centers, 404 Media has learned.
asserted
Media → test → centers
“We just expanded the @muse beta for outbound calls to US businesses,” Ryan Fox, the principal engineer on Muse posted on X on Sept. 16.
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Fox → expand → Sept.
Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer, posted “we’re expanding our phone beta for muse!”
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we → post → muse
Internally, however, the company announced the features to employees and said that it had “added a human agent layer for calls to get completed,” and that “Muse human agent calls [sic] is ready for company dogfooding,” or testing.
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calls → announce → dogfooding
“Muse doesn’t just dial a number.
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Muse → dial → number
It calls a business on your behalf, handles the conversation, completes your request, and reports back with a transcript and a summary,” the internal message board post to employees, seen by 404 Media, reads.
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post → call → Media
“It also no longer works alone.
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It → work → ?
Muse is now able to hand requests to a trained human agent, who places the call and works it through.
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who → hand → it
“This is still a confidential, pre-launch product,” the post adds.
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post → add → ?
“Please don’t share it, or anything it producers, with anyone outside the company.”
Once again, a core feature of a major piece of AI technology will actually just be people working in a call center, doing work that a company says AI is doing.
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AI → share → that
It is not clear how often or when a call is routed to a so-called “human agent,” and when a call is done exclusively by AI.
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call → rout → AI
The fact that human beings are involved in the call raised questions among employees, who wondered both about the privacy implications of sharing people’s call requests with other human beings as well as the perception that its AI assistant wasn’t advanced enough to do calls on its own.
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assistant → involve → own
“Not sure what I am missing here but why is this a ‘feature?,’ one employee wrote on Meta’s internal message board for workers.
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employee → miss → workers
“This has potential for so much negative PR.
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This → have → PR
It could portray us as ‘their AI is not good enough so they still need humans’ kind of coverage for this launch.”
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they → portray → launch
That Meta is at least sometimes letting human beings read users’ chats and make phone calls on their behalf is part of a time honored tradition in which companies launch an AI product, claim that it is AI, only for it to be later learned that human beings are doing some or all of the work.
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beings → let → work
And it is the latest example of a tech giant passing potentially highly sensitive information to human beings; it is easy to imagine someone asking Muse to make a sensitive doctor’s appointment, for example, and the user not knowing that a human being might make that call.
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being → pass → call
In internal communications seen by 404 Media, Meta suggested to employees that potentially sensitive information shared by the user with AI — and then passed to human contractors — was still safe because the contractors had undergone “a lot of training to make sure all your data is safe and secure.”
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data → see → training
An employee commented that the training “is not a [security] mechanism.”
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training → comment → ?
“This is absolutely going to create a ton of outcry if we publicly launch this as default-on.
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we → go → on
It will kill all the goodwill and organic press we’re getting from early adopters,” they wrote.
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they → kill → adopters
“Please think about how the headlines will scream ‘Meta uses humans behind the scenes to make calls’ or ‘Muse AI is actually independent contractors’ and result in a ton of bad press about the privacy and security of our data handling […] please PLEASE do not release this as-is and at least make this a user preference if we absolutely must launch this.
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we → think → this
Other employees who had tested the system said that it was a “bad bad idea,” and that they were not made aware that a human being did the call for them until after the call had been made: The tester “was not made aware of the caller being human and was only told after,” one employee wrote.
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employee → test → them
“So they were concerned with information that they shared with the assumption that it is the secure AI which is making the call.
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which → concern → call
Even with clear indication of human calling, I can think of many scenarios where I wouldn’t be comfortable with this and I am not positive about how our users will react to this.”
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users → think → this
Various Meta employees and regular users have posted about Muse’s ability to make phone calls, and their experience with it.
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employees → post → it
Ravid Shwartz Ziv, who does AI research at Meta, posted on X that “this week, Muse called customer service on my behalf.
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Muse → do → behalf
It navigated the phone tree, waited on hold, spoke with a human rep, and resolved the issue (worked great!).
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It → navigate → issue
The crazy thing for me (besides that it works) is that the rep didn’t blink.
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rep → work → me
Talking to a bot was completely natural to them.”
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Talking → talk → them
Others have posted that the call function didn’t work, or that the person on the other end hung up on the agent (some have said that Muse did what it was supposed to do).
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it → post → what
While the response from employees has been overwhelmingly positive, the entire point is to get feedback so we can implement safety and privacy protections and improve features before we release them publicly,” a Meta spokesperson told 404 Media.
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spokesperson → get → Media
“We’re working with merchants to continue improving this potential calling feature, and will only roll it out when it's ready and with the proper disclosures.”
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it → work → disclosures
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