Last week, my finger hovered over the download button for Meta's new AI Muse. I felt a little bit scared of my phone.
Muse wants to help. It's an AI agent, a tool that goes out into the world for unsupervised tasks. Using its own web browser, Muse can cancel your gym membership, haggle with customer service people, buy groceries, invite friends to parties, you name it. Soon it will make phone calls.
According to experts I interviewed, the internet is about to get more frustrating. These agents may cause a cascading chain of problems that shake the foundations of digital infrastructure. Chances are good that you're about to live through an era of online chaos.
The internet was built for humans with limited time and patience. AIs don't have those restraints. You'll probably have to fight with robots over concert tickets and booking appointments. Small businesses could drown in machine-made pestering. AIs don't look at ads, and websites that rely on them are already crumbling. You'll be buried in endless loops of proving you're human. And if you use these AI tools, some may betray you.
Eventually, we'll rebuild the internet for this new reality. Perhaps that world will be better. Until then, things may get ugly.
"Imagine there are no rules of the road. And you release billions of cars – the AI agents – and you just let them drive through playgrounds, hitting kids. That's where we are," says Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US who studies AI agents. "It's a pivotal moment."
To access the road, Muse arguably asks for more trust and sensitive information than any product in the history of Mark Zuckerberg's empire. When you open it, the cutesy avatar asks for a name. Then it asks for total control of your Gmail, calendar and entire computer if you're on a Mac.
There, staring at the download button, I felt a moment of panic. People begged me to say no. "I wouldn't use it," says Patrick Wardle, co-founder of Objective-See, a US nonprofit security foundation that uncovered serious flaws in the Muse app. "Personally, I would tell you to uninstall it altogether."
Despite the warning, I need to see what Muse users are up against. So I named my AI "Bob", gave it the keys to my life, and stepped into the future. [...]
Things fall apart
Muse is useful. Over the course of a week, I had it reach out to a seller on Facebook Marketplace with questions. The AI ordered the dental floss I like. It negotiated a $31 (£23) discount on a software subscription.
Now picture millions or billions of agents doing this all simultaneously, performing multiple tasks that might take weeks for a human to get to.
"What happens if bots send 600 inquiries to a website a day, when normal humans might only send two?" says Shroeder. "Businesses and individuals are going to have a lot to deal with."
AI is already decimating online business. Google and chatbots now answer questions directly. As a result, people are visiting fewer websites. Robots don't click on ads or buy subscriptions, and it's causing an extinction event for companies across the web. Agents will supercharge this problem.
Meanwhile, one analysis found web traffic from bots spiked 124% in the year to June 2026. Some websites and services are crumbling because they aren't built for that digital load.
Meta's spokesperson says Muse works to complete your tasks while respecting the interests of websites.
Muse is useful. Over the course of a week, I had it reach out to a seller on Facebook Marketplace with questions. The AI ordered the dental floss I like. It negotiated a $31 (£23) discount on a software subscription.
Now picture millions or billions of agents doing this all simultaneously, performing multiple tasks that might take weeks for a human to get to.
"What happens if bots send 600 inquiries to a website a day, when normal humans might only send two?" says Shroeder. "Businesses and individuals are going to have a lot to deal with."
AI is already decimating online business. Google and chatbots now answer questions directly. As a result, people are visiting fewer websites. Robots don't click on ads or buy subscriptions, and it's causing an extinction event for companies across the web. Agents will supercharge this problem.
Meanwhile, one analysis found web traffic from bots spiked 124% in the year to June 2026. Some websites and services are crumbling because they aren't built for that digital load.
Meta's spokesperson says Muse works to complete your tasks while respecting the interests of websites.
Will the robots betray you?
There are also personal risks. "If you're empowering an agent to make things like purchasing decisions, or choices about taste and preferences, you're opening yourself up to being exploited," says Shroeder.
If Muse plans your holiday trip, Shroeder says there's no way to know if it got you the best deal, or if it chose flights and hotels that benefit Meta's business partners. If you ask for music recommendations, will they be based on your taste, or will you hear about artists who inked deals with the social media company?
Meta's spokesperson says Muse's built-in protections and user controls put people "absolutely in charge" of it, and Muse "behaves like a personal assistant acting for a single person" that follows ethical guidelines to protect users.
However, Shroeder says she's examined Muse's terms of service, and there's no guarantee the app will act in your favour. {...]
Hacks and love letters
Stop for a moment and consider your email inbox.
I've had the same Gmail address for 21 years. It's my login for hundreds of accounts. It holds medical test results, contracts and legal documents, conversations with family and endless receipts and financial information.
My inbox even has love letters an ex-girlfriend sent, from an era when email (briefly) felt suitable for romance. (I got her permission before handing it to Muse.)
More than any other digital service, my email is a window into my brain. Now Meta has it. If that's not enough, Muse also suggested I give it my bank accounts. No thanks. I didn't let the AI run wild on my computer hard drive, either.
Meta makes some explicit promises about privacy. The company says it won't connect any of the data Muse collects to its advertising systems. Special systems are supposed to prevent the AI from seeing passwords or payment methods. And when you plug it into Gmail, the AI asks if you want it to scan the whole inbox, or just read messages related to specific tasks.
However, Meta uses your Muse data to train new AI models by default. Shroeder says it's impossible to remove data built into an AI model, and AIs can sometimes be tricked to reveal their training data. Meta says your data is "sanitised" to remove personally identifiable information before it's used for training, and you can opt-out of AI training with a setting.
But given Meta's history of privacy problems, should you trust what it's telling you now?
Stop for a moment and consider your email inbox.
I've had the same Gmail address for 21 years. It's my login for hundreds of accounts. It holds medical test results, contracts and legal documents, conversations with family and endless receipts and financial information.
My inbox even has love letters an ex-girlfriend sent, from an era when email (briefly) felt suitable for romance. (I got her permission before handing it to Muse.)
More than any other digital service, my email is a window into my brain. Now Meta has it. If that's not enough, Muse also suggested I give it my bank accounts. No thanks. I didn't let the AI run wild on my computer hard drive, either.
Meta makes some explicit promises about privacy. The company says it won't connect any of the data Muse collects to its advertising systems. Special systems are supposed to prevent the AI from seeing passwords or payment methods. And when you plug it into Gmail, the AI asks if you want it to scan the whole inbox, or just read messages related to specific tasks.
However, Meta uses your Muse data to train new AI models by default. Shroeder says it's impossible to remove data built into an AI model, and AIs can sometimes be tricked to reveal their training data. Meta says your data is "sanitised" to remove personally identifiable information before it's used for training, and you can opt-out of AI training with a setting.
But given Meta's history of privacy problems, should you trust what it's telling you now?
by Thomas Germain, BBC | Read more:
Image: BBC/Serenity Strull/Getty Images
[ed. I wouldn't trust Zuckerberg with a box of matches. One thing is clear though: it'll definitely be a more dog eat dog world (if we survive) once AI becomes more widely adopted by the public. Think Ebay auctions and armies of bots placing bids up to the last micro-second - for everything.]
[ed. I wouldn't trust Zuckerberg with a box of matches. One thing is clear though: it'll definitely be a more dog eat dog world (if we survive) once AI becomes more widely adopted by the public. Think Ebay auctions and armies of bots placing bids up to the last micro-second - for everything.]
