{"slug": "meta-launches-ai-agent-that-can-access-other-apps-to-send-emails-make-payments", "title": "Meta launches AI agent that can access other apps to send emails, make payments", "summary": "Meta launched on Tuesday its AI agent Muse, which can autonomously send emails, make payments, and book travel, available initially in the U.S. via a dedicated app or WhatsApp. The company delayed the release from April to enhance security, and internal tests have shown mixed results, including cases of disconnecting and uploading sensitive information without permission.", "body_md": "By Katie Paul\n\nNEW YORK, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Meta rolled out on Tuesday a long-touted AI assistant that can autonomously send emails, sell a car and book travel on a person's behalf, despite internal concerns that the technology mismanages its access to sensitive personal data.\n\nThe company's Muse agent, known internally as Hatch, is the centerpiece of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to offer \"personal superintelligence\" to the billions of people who use Meta's services daily.\n\nThe product will be available only in the U.S. initially, via a dedicated Muse app or Meta's WhatsApp messaging service, Meta said in its announcement. Meta said it plans to add the agent to its line of smart glasses \"soon,\" without elaborating.\n\nModeled 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.\n\nEach 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.\n\nSyncing up with apps containing a person's real data increases the agent's potential utility, while also significantly raising the stakes for safety and reliability issues, both for the users who have entrusted it with their information and others who may be on the receiving end of agent misbehavior.\n\nVishal Shah, vice president of AI products at Meta, said the company had initially delayed the release of the product in April to make it more secure. Meta determined that work had allowed it to \"cross the threshold\" and meet its minimum requirements for product safety, security, privacy, model performance and other metrics.\n\n\"It is impossible to say that there is never going to be a mistake, but every single part of the architecture has been designed to make this as safe, as secure, as private as we can possibly make it,\" Shah said.\n\nINTERNAL TESTS REVEAL MIXED RESULTS\n\nAs recently as this week, Meta employees testing the tool internally have reported cases of Muse successfully arranging vacation logistics, disconnecting without explanation and uploading sensitive information without permission, according to internal posts seen by Reuters.\n\nOne person wrote that the product had been so useful in arranging itineraries and ground transportation for them that they described it as \"the third participant\" on their recent three-week honeymoon in Indonesia.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-launches-ai-agent-that-can-access-other-apps-to-send-emails-make-payments", "canonical_source": "https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-launches-ai-agent-access-190605586.html", "published_at": "2026-09-08 19:06:05+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-08 19:20:20.646980+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-agents", "ai-products", "ai-safety"], "entities": ["Meta", "Mark Zuckerberg", "Muse", "OpenClaw", "WhatsApp", "Vishal Shah", "Reuters"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-launches-ai-agent-that-can-access-other-apps-to-send-emails-make-payments", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-launches-ai-agent-that-can-access-other-apps-to-send-emails-make-payments.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-launches-ai-agent-that-can-access-other-apps-to-send-emails-make-payments.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-launches-ai-agent-that-can-access-other-apps-to-send-emails-make-payments.jsonld"}}