Meta's Muse AI "Phone Agent" Was Often a Human Contractor in a Call Center

Meta's Muse personal AI agent, launched September 8, 2026, offers to call businesses on users' behalf. Some of those calls were handled by human contractors, without disclosure. Meta enabled the hybrid setup for half its own employees last week before rolling it back after staff raised privacy concerns about sensitive information reaching third-party call centers. One employee's transcript showed a contractor making a racist remark during a bill-negotiation call; Meta apologized and removed that agent from its projects.

The business case is straightforward: businesses hang up on AI callers, so human agents push success rates to 95–98%. The privacy and transparency case is less flattering. Meta joins a short but distinguished list that includes Nate, whose "AI checkout" was largely completed by hundreds of Filipino and Romanian workers, Amazon's "Just Walk Out" stores (reportedly requiring human review on ~70% of transactions), and Meta's own Facebook M, which routed every message through Menlo Park contractors while describing itself as AI-powered. A Meta executive called the lack of disclosure "a mistake."