'Things may get ugly': Meta's new AI Muse is about to make the internet more annoying

Someday we'll redesign the internet for tools like this. Until then, you're in for a wild ride.

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.

It's the first free, full-featured agent from a big company. Millions downloaded Muse in its opening weeks, and OpenAI just announced its own new agent. More are coming. It's the dawn of a new chapter for the web. What will it be like?

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. 

"Muse is the first personal AI agent built for everyone and designed to be safe, secure and private – with built-in protections and user controls that put people in charge of how they use it," a Meta spokesperson tells me. "Safety and security is a huge priority for us," they said, and added and Muse faced extensive testing.

But experts agree there's chaos ahead. If you want a preview of the world that agents may create, look at Taylor Swift. In 2024, some American Swifties flew to Europe to see her. Scalpers, who buy tickets to resell at a mark-up, drove US ticket prices so high it was cheaper to buy flights to international concerts. 

Now everyone can have their own personal scalper bot. What we might call the "Swiftie problem" is predicted to explode.

"There's going to be a huge escalation of the problems we're already having with bots," says Calli Schroeder, director of the AI and Human Rights Program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic) in the US.

Say goodbye to reservations at that hot new restaurant. Appointments for passport or........

© BBC