Meta brags that its new AI agent, Muse, can be an all-around “personal assistant” that takes care of everything in your mundane little life, ranging from online shopping, to managing emails, to keeping tabs on your finances — and, hell, even picking your wardrobe, disheveled slob that you are.
Last week, it also announced something that actually sounded useful in an age where picking up the phone usually results in conversing with a bot: calling businesses on your behalf. No longer would you need to make an appointment, reserve a table, or wait through a phone tree on your own. Muse, Meta says, has you covered.
It would be an impressive example of a practical AI use case for the average person — if it were really, truly, AI. Behind the scenes, Meta is having some of these calls being handled by humans in call centers, 404 Media reports, despite employees practically begging the company not to go through with the charade.
It’s yet another example of classic AI industry subterfuge. Their tools are framed as powerful and self-sufficient, but in many cases it’s a façade being propped up by humans — often underpaid contractors, sometimes overseas — behind the scenes.
For now, it’s unclear how many calls are being routed to humans, and the feature remains in its “dogfooding,” or testing, stage. The company abruptly announced the feature to employees and said it had “added a human agent layer for calls to get completed.”
“Muse doesn’t just dial a 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 announcement, which was viewed by 404, reads. “It also no longer works alone. Muse is now able to hand requests to a trained human agent, who places the call and works it through.”
“This is still a confidential, pre-launch product,” the notice adds. “Please don’t share it, or anything it producers, with anyone outside the company.”
Employees were immediately skeptical, for good reason. By and large, they worried that word that Meta was even entertaining the idea could doom Muse’s image, while others raised the security concerns of sharing customer’s private requests internally.
“Not sure what I am missing here but why is this a ‘feature?,’” one employee wrote on an internal message board, per 404, whose skepticism would prove prescient. “This has potential for so much negative PR. It could portray us as ‘their AI is not good enough so they still need humans’ kind of coverage for this launch.”
Some practically threw themselves at their bosses feet, supplicating for a reversal.
“This is absolutely going to create a ton of outcry if we publicly launch this as default-on,” another urged. “It will kill all the goodwill and organic press we’re getting from early 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,” they continued, their prostration ever more despairing. “please PLEASE do not release this as-is and at least make this a user preference if we absolutely must launch this. Please.”
In a statement to 404, Meta responded by framing the feature as a routine part of internal testing, though it didn’t rule out taking it mainstream.
“While the response from employees has been overwhelmingly positive,” a spokesperson averred, “the entire point is to get feedback so we can implement safety and privacy protections and improve features before we release them publicly.”
“We’re working with merchants to continue improving this potential calling feature,” the spokesperson added, “and will only roll it out when it’s ready and with the proper disclosures.”
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