Meta Wants Its New AI Agent Inside Your Inbox, Browser And Wallet

Teens may be able to use Meta’s new artificial intelligence agent inside its messaging app to do work for them.

Meta launched Muse, a personal artificial intelligence agent, that can search the internet, send out emails, and purchase items all on a user’s behalf on WhatsApp and its standalone app, the company announced on Tuesday. While the agent is restricted to users 18 and older, it arrived on a messaging service widely used by teens in the U.S. and across the globe.

The big tech company agreed to a roughly $17 billion settlement in Oakland, CA, on Aug. 26, pledging to add age checks and teen safeguards to Facebook and Instagram. Messaging apps, however, were explicitly excluded from the settlement.

“[Meta’s Social Media Platforms] shall mean the existing and future web and app versions of Instagram and Facebook … excluding, in each case, any and all direct messaging features linked to or included in those platforms, such as Instagram Direct or Messenger … and any other product or service of Meta or any of its Affiliates as it exists as of the Effective Date,” the settlement stated, defining the products affected in the deal.

Muse is also excluded from the settlement, as it is an AI tool created after the deal, according to the settlement.

The deal explained that excluded items included, “An internet-based product and/or service whose primary function is direct messaging, or a product, service, and/or feature whose primary function is … artificial intelligence features, chatbots, or interactions with artificial intelligence.”

“Introducing Muse, your personal AI agent from Meta that gets things done across every part of life,” Muse said in a Tuesday X post announcing the launch of its app.

Meta did not immediately provide a comment on the record to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“People need to understand that by using AI agents, they are handing over their online life to the companies behind those agents,” Rory Mir, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s director of open access and tech community engagement, told the DCNF. “In the way social media platforms insert themselves between us and our friends, AI agents from big tech aim to insert themselves between us and the open web.”

Mir added that users on Meta’s platforms should be skeptical when using AI tool because current privacy laws do not protect consumers, and a lack of cybersecurity protections leaves users even more vulnerable.

“Every purchase, text, or web search comes with more surveillance and more corporate influence from the underlying algorithm,” Mir told the DCNF. “It’s the same playbook anytime a tech giant wants to insert themselves as a middleman and wring users for profit and influence.”

Meta’s WhatApp is used by roughly a quarter of American teens, according to a Dec. 2025 Pew Research Center report. The app is more popular in the United Kingdom, where roughly 61 percent of teens use it for messaging, according to a May 2026 Ofcom report on children’s online experiences.

The messaging app features more than 3 billion active monthly users, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s April 2025 Facebook post.

“Our focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI — with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations, and entertainment,” Zuckerberg said in the post. “I think that we’re all going to have an AI that we talk to throughout the day — while we’re browsing content on our phones.”

Muse is listed as “18+” on the Apple app store, and Meta further states that Muse is not intended for teens on its terms of service page.

“[Y]ou cannot use Muse if you are under the age of 18 (or such greater age required in your country or territory) or if you are prohibited from receiving our services or software under applicable laws,” Meta stated on the AI platform’s terms of service page.

WhatsApp’s FAQ page states that its users must be 13 years old or older to use its platform.