Meta Denies Claims That 'Muse' AI Read Private Messages Without User Consent

Tech giant Meta has strongly refuted recent allegations claiming its flagship artificial intelligence assistant, Muse, accessed a user's private messages without authorization on macOS devices. The controversy arose after tech columnist Jason Aten reported that the Muse AI application on Mac accessed his iMessage content despite Full Disk Access permissions being disabled in his system settings. Responding to the report, Meta Vice President of Communications Andy Stone clarified on social media that the Messages integration within Muse is strictly opt-in and operates under multi-layered system protections. "You have to enable both Full Disk Access and the Messages connector for Muse to be able to read your Messages content," Stone stated, emphasizing that the application cannot circumvent macOS security protocols.Adding technical clarity, David Singleton from Meta Superintelligence Labs detailed that accessing messages requires explicit user interaction across three separate permission steps, including a mandatory manual confirmation in system settings that triggers an application restart. Addressing the reporter's claim that the AI referenced notification syncing as the data source, Singleton explained that the conversational model likely hallucinated an inaccurate technical explanation. While Meta maintains that its security architecture prevents unauthorized data access, the scrutiny comes as tech companies face heightened public attention over consumer data privacy and autonomous AI agent behavior. Despite the controversy, Muse continues to rank among the top AI applications on consumer app stores.