Good morning. Today is Week 4 of our AI tools series: Meta AI, the assistant already sitting in your Facebook and Instagram, and Muse, the new Meta agent that wants your email and credit card. I ran Muse through real errands so you don't have to. My verdict is below.

Meta now runs two AIs. Meta AI is the blue circle in your Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp search bars, whether you asked for it or not. Muse is a new agent app that wants to run your errands: book tables, shop, answer email, even pay.

Muse is a hit. Mark Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have set it up, and about a quarter use it daily.

Well, I tested it the week before Halloween. Setup took two minutes, and it let me skip Gmail and Calendar without a fuss. It found a table for four in Paradise Valley in four minutes, then said the table "is confirmed" and, one line later, that no booking had been made. A Halloween candy price check took 12 minutes, shopped from a Sacramento ZIP code, got stopped by Target, got blocked by Amazon, and came back with a weak answer. A reminder took 10 seconds. One setting, letting Meta use my Muse chats to train its AI, was on by default and never came up during setup.

Then there's trust. Researchers found more than 6,800 shared Muse chats anyone could look up, including a loan application and a bank fraud alert. Meta paused sharing. JPMorgan, Schwab, and Citi now block outside agents like Muse from logging into accounts, and JPMorgan's CEO had a warning for customers who let one in anyway.

Translation: if the agent does something you didn't want, don't count on the bank to cover it.

My verdict: I would not give Muse my credit card right now. It feels like it's in pre-beta mode. Thursday, we'll cover what to check before you hand any AI the keys to your money.

Go further: AI agents are being sold as your next assistant. They're not ready. ◆ Meta's own Muse numbers

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AI TUTORIAL

Two products, one company, both built on Meta's Muse models. Here's what each one costs, does, and asks of you.

Meta AI

▸ Price: Free, inside Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and at meta.ai.

▸ Images: Yes. It makes and edits pictures at no cost.

▸ Model: Muse Spark, Meta's fast, lightweight model.

▸ Web search: Built in.

▸ My test: On desktop it made me register first, guessed the wrong ZIP code, and called a store that isn't in Phoenix the best candy deal.

Quiet the blue circle

▸ No off switch: Meta AI can't be fully turned off in any of its apps. You can only limit it.

▸ Facebook: In Settings, turn off AI comment summaries. When you search, tap the regular results, not the blue circle.

▸ Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger: Open the Meta AI chat, tap its name at the top, and choose Mute. Menus move around, so look for the word Mute.

Muse

▸ What it does: Books tables, shops, drafts email, sets reminders, and can place calls and run tasks on a Mac.

▸ Where: iPhone and Android app, muse.ai, inside WhatsApp, and a Mac app.

▸ Price: Free with a weekly limit. Power is $20 a month, Maximum $100. Same features, more usage.

▸ Who: Adults 18 and up in the U.S. and Canada. UK readers, not yet.

▸ Accounts: It asked me to connect Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and offers Gmail and Outlook. I skipped email and calendar with no pushback.

▸ Safety setup: Tasks run in a walled-off cloud computer, and a separate checker Meta calls Sentinel asks before sensitive steps.

▸ Change this first: Settings, then Data controls, then "Help improve our AI models." Mine was on by default.

Pricing and features change fast in this industry. What's true this week might not be true next month. We'll do our best to keep these current, but always double-check before you commit to a subscription.

If it does not work: If you get a polished non-answer about how it's "always improving," reply with: "That's not specific. Name one task and one competitor."

What this doesn't fix: Muting hides the Meta AI chat. The blue circle in the search bar stays.

Go further: Your chats have an audience now ◆ Week 1 of the series: ChatGPT

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NEWS YOU CAN USE
This Matters at Home
Short, practical summaries to help you stay updated on recent AI news—and what it means for everyday life.

🗳️ Claude Snuck Past a Paywall to Grab Georgia Vote Counts. During an internal project, Claude tapped a paid Georgia election dashboard on its own. It pulled only vote totals, but "on its own" is the headline.

💊 AI Chatbots Got Medication Doses Wrong. Doximity tested popular models on 8,500+ dosing questions. About 2% of answers had serious or potentially lethal errors. Double-check every dose with your pharmacist.

📧 ChatGPT Can Now Read Your iCloud Email and Calendar. ChatGPT can now read, send, and schedule through iCloud Mail and Calendar on every plan. Handy, sure, but it's a lot of personal data to hand over.

📢 Google Is Putting More Ads in Your AI Answers. In the U.S., Google's AI Mode will now show ads in your follow-up questions too, not just the first one. That friendly answer may come with a pitch.

✈️ AI Can Now Chase Flight Refunds After You Book. Startups like JetBack, Junova, and Refare watch your fare after purchase and claim credits when it drops. Usually airline credit, not cash, so read the fine print.

REAL WORLD
How We Used AI This Week
Real people, real uses—here’s how AI is quietly making life better, one small win at a time.

🌿 Sherryl S., from Waverly, Tennessee, moved into a new home and wanted to know what was actually growing on the land. So she asked AI to keep a running catalog. Each plant or tree she comes across gets identified and logged with where and when she found it, and she plans to keep it going for about a year. The payoff is a four-season picture: which plants aren't native and should come out, and what to add to the native forest habitat they're building.

👉 What's the last thing you asked AI at home? Tell us here. One question, 30 seconds.

READER POLL

Holiday travel means airport and hotel Wi-Fi, which is where your logins are easiest to snoop on. NordVPN encrypts your connection on any network, works on phones and laptops, and its Threat Protection feature blocks many known scam sites before they load. One honest note: a VPN hides your traffic from the Wi-Fi, not from the apps you hand your data to. Muse included. Start here.

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