The controversy began when Jason Aten, a contributing editor at Inc. magazine, reported that the Muse AI assistant from Meta accessed content from his macOS notification pop-ups without explicit authorization. Aten noted that the AI was able to answer questions based on private messages from his Mac, even though he had not granted the application access to his messaging app.
When questioned about the source of the information, the Muse AI assistant claimed it retrieved the data directly from notification previews. This prompted a public response from David Singleton, an executive at Meta Superintelligence Labs, who addressed the concerns regarding the assistant's data collection methods and required system permissions.
Singleton clarified that for the Mac version of Muse to function as intended, users must manually grant it full disk access. He explicitly denied that the AI monitors macOS notifications. According to the executive, the system only collects data from messaging applications after the user provides clear and active authorization for such access.
The situation remains unresolved as the statements from the user and the company contradict each other. While the AI assistant explicitly stated it used notification previews, Meta maintains that it does not listen to system notifications and only synchronizes data through authorized app access. Further investigation is required to clarify the technical process.
