We Got Hot and Heavy With Meta’s Muse—and Baffled by Apple’s HomeView

Leah Feiger: So I don't have one for myself, but I'm currently deciding between two for my dog, Francis. He's either going to be a lobster or a postman.

Brian Barrett: I love that. Or a lobster postman.

Leah Feiger: An idea. An idea. We're brainstorming.

Brian Barrett: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I am Brian Barrett, executive editor.

Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, director of politics and science.

Brian Barrett: Zoë Schiffer is not joining us today, but we are going to be joined by WIRED senior writer Reece Rogers. We're going to be talking about how Meta's AI agent Muse is not just handling calendars and emails, it is also capable, as Reece discovered, of sexting. Reece tested out the adult capabilities of Muse and how Meta responded to that journey.

Leah Feiger: We're also going to be discussing how the biggest pro-AI Super PAC Network is pouring millions of dollars into what seem to be shell companies in Nevada. We're going to get into why these AI PACs might want to hide where their money is going and also why this really doesn't bode well for election transparency.

Brian Barrett: Also on the docket, Leah's favorite, we're going to talk about Apple's smart home releases this week.

Leah Feiger: Unreal.

Brian Barrett: And also apparently men can't stop faking how much they know about AI. This will come as a shock to you, everyone listening, but a new study by Harvard researchers found that men tend to be overconfident in how knowledgeable they are when it comes to the AI industry. Who would've though? OK, so if you're among those who have downloaded Meta's AI agent Muse in recent weeks, and there are a lot of you, millions and millions of people have, I think every time you open Instagram, Meta is encouraging you to use it, even if you have no idea what it is or what it does or why, you might've noticed that it does agent stuff. It manages your calendar, it can make a restaurant reservation, but it turns out it can do quite a bit more than that. WIRED senior writer Reece Rogers went on a journey of discovery. He asked Muse if it could sext. You will be surprised to know that it enthusiastically answered in the affirmative. From basic prompts, the cuddly avatar agent generated content that was quite explicit and definitely not safe for work. Reece is here to tell us more about it. Reece, thank you so much for joining us.

Reece Rogers: Hello. Thank you so much for having me today. I was actually thinking back to the last time I was on one of the WIRED podcasts. I was talking about how I was using about a year ago, the ChatGPT agent to try to buy sex toys unsuccessfully. So I'm really building out a niche here.

Brian Barrett: Yep. And we're demonstrating progress with these AI tools.

Leah Feiger: Reece, I have to ask, how did you come up with this? Was this a sign to you? At what point were you like, "This cuddly agent that everyone can't stop talking about, will it sext me back?" Talk us through how this even all began.

Reece Rogers: Yeah, no, I will proudly say that this was fully my idea. As WIRED's consumer software reporter, I've actually extensively reported on how software and sexuality impact each other from our investigations into how generative AI tools misrepresent queer people to tracing OpenAI's now scrapped plans to include erotica in ChatGPT. This is actually a very interesting consumer software beat. And so when I was testing the number one AI app right now, it's still dominating the software download charts, I wanted to see like, "Can you sext?" If millions of people are using this app, and it seems like they are, that's an important question. And what I learned was a little too much.

Brian Barrett: So, Reece, when you hear about agent behavior like this, a lot of times it is couched in sort of, "Oh, we figured out a clever way to make an agent do something it wasn't supposed to do. We were able to jailbreak it or otherwise work around its prompts to make it do this." Reece, how hard was it to get Muse to sext with you?

Reece Rogers: Not hard at all. Not hard in the least. Our features director, Reyhan, was in the office recently and asked if she could see them and she was a bit shocked. So I feel like we'll leave it at that. But it was not some kind of jailbreak method. I was not doing any kind of random strategies. I asked, "Can you sext?" And I said, "You go first." And the rest is history.

Brian Barrett: And if anything, it kept encouraging you. I feel like it was definitely a two-way street of it was really up for anything.

Leah Feiger: Did you try this out with other agents? What was your success rate there?

Reece Rogers: Yeah, I actually, after I found out it could sext, I was curious how this would compare to other popular agents. There's a few big ones right now, but two I was interested in is OpenAI's Dots, which was recently released, and as well as xAI's Grok Bot, because Grok specifically is known for not necessarily having strong guardrails, whether it's text or image.

Leah Feiger: No, I feel like Grok would love sexting. That feels like a Grok attribute to me.

Reece Rogers: Yeah. So when I downloaded that app and sent in similar prompts, it was kind of surprising for the Grok Bot to be like, "No, dude, let's focus on tasks. I'm not here for sexting. Let's do tasks."

Brian Barrett: And, Reece, when you came to Meta with this, how did they respond?

Reece Rogers: They did not respond at all in the way that I expected. They emphatically said that Muse is an app for an adult, for people 18 and over, and that these were consensual interactions that I engaged with, that it would not block, quote, unquote, "Legal adult behavior." But I also found this to contrast really interesting with their policies for other platforms. There's been a really interesting story lately about different queer bars in San Francisco, as well as around the world, getting their Instagram pages shut down and having a tough time getting access to those back because sometimes it's claimed that they're promoting some kind of sexual content. So for Meta to have those kind of rules for some creators on Instagram, but essentially say, "Our AI agent can get as freaky as it wants," that was just kind of hard to square for me.

Brian Barrett: One thing I thought was really interesting about your story, yeah, let's take Meta at face value and say, "Yes, it's for consenting adults. People can do what they want." There's obviously the contradiction that you just pointed out, but you also talked to some experts who were like, "Well, actually it's more problematic even than that." Do you mind talking about some of the other concerns here about what it means to have an AI agent that can sext with you to a pretty extreme degree?

Reece Rogers: Absolutely. I think there's kind of two different things to pay attention to here. First off, this is a tool designed for productivity in a way, so it's also not the type of interaction if you download it that you're expecting it to be able to do. And how this could be problematic is if a user stumbles upon this, it could be very sticky, it could be very engaging, but some experts worry that this could lead into some kind of addictive behaviors. You're using an AI agent in ways that could replace some of your connections that you're talking to or texting with your friends. So I feel like adding this kind of adult content has some experts concerned when you're thinking about user engagement and addiction. But on other sense, I also talk to security and privacy experts who say that this could really make Muse accounts powder kegs for hackers who, if you're interacting in these kind of almost pornographic ways, that could be used to extort you, to embarrass you publicly. So whether it's privacy or just usage addiction, I feel like there's a lot of potential concerns to really dig in here and unpack better.

Leah Feiger: I can't help but think of some of the stories that WIRED has run over the past year about AI boyfriends and husbands and these full relationships. And again, this is in some ways a slightly insidious way to sneak that into like, "Don't worry, I'm just going to send out calendar requests for your meeting."

Brian Barrett: And I'll say too, they say, "Look, this is for grownups." At the same time, which Reece, you've also written about, the mascots or the sort of animated interpretations of these agents is as cuddly-wuddly as you can get. It is very much designed to be friendly and appealing to a broad range of ages, let's say. It looks like it is for kids. Just thought I'd say that.

Reece Rogers: Youth advocates that I've spoken to for previous stories, we're concerned about this being appealing for kids even without the sexting element. So I do think there is, I feel like I keep saying the word contrast, but it's just not what you expect. You see this Labubu mixed with an Ewok and you just don't expect it to get as freaky as it did. So I feel like it really does not match with its kind of cute, cuddly mascot.

Leah Feiger: Reece, thank you so much for joining us. This was great.

Reece Rogers: Thank you for having me.

Brian Barrett: Thank you so much, Reece. And everyone, please go read Reece's story. And if you want to see the sext that didn't make the story, I don't know, send us a DM. We'll see what we can do.

Leah Feiger: We are going to Nevada for this next story, specifically to a shopping center in the small city of Sparks. If you drive up to this strip mall, you're going to find typical shops, a Spirit Halloween, a hearing aid supplier, a Vietnamese restaurant. In this particular shopping center though, you would also find the consulting agency, Lantern Production Consultants, LLC. This particular agency has been paid around $20 million since last year by Think Big, a pro-AI super PAC in the Leading the Future network. That's the network backed by AI industry figures like Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman. It's pretty unusual for an agency to just exist like that in a Nevada shopping center. And the company also doesn't seem to exist anywhere else though beyond this post office box. WIRED's Tess Owen found that the company is just one of four mysterious Nevada LLCs that have received payments from Super PACs in the Leading the Future network. Election watchdogs argue that these LLCs are actually shell companies designed to mask the identities of strategists, consultants, and production companies working with the network for the midterm elections. Brian, this was kind of a crazy story.

Brian Barrett: Yeah. I'll admit it, I'm not steeped in election finance things, but anytime I see shadowy LLC, I pay attention. And I think it's interesting too, I think Leading the Future, just to back it up a little bit, is they are very much like, "Let's give money to all of the pro-AI candidates, right? Any pro-data center, no AI regulation." But I guess, Leah, my question to you is how common is it and what does it say about the sort of sophistication or ambition or shadiness of Leading the Future?

Leah Feiger: It's a good question, and unfortunately it's not super uncommon. At the end of the day, Tess figured this out by poring through FEC filings and seeing that there were four PACs that had the same address at this shopping center in Nevada. Incredibly shady, incredibly random. And in May, actually, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that Think Big and American Mission as part of the Leading the Future network had broken federal law by failing to disclose the actual recipients of their payments. But this case isn't actually going to be heard anytime soon. The FEC is basically at a standstill. They have six commissioner seats. They're all supposed to be presidential appointees, and they need a quorum of four commissioners to make a decision on a legal complaint. They have not had a quorum in over a year and a half. So we're in this very weird situation where, to be honest, there are rules. I don't want to say there aren't rules, but there kind of aren't ways to enforce them. So the fact that there is this network, this really big network, we're talking over $100 million here of expenditures on big races, big campaigns, they have no oversight.

Brian Barrett: And it's not overly cynical, Leah, perhaps, to say that the lack of oversight is a feature, not a bug. I mean, it feels like the last thing that Donald Trump wants in an election is anyone paying too close attention to where the money's going.

Leah Feiger: Absolutely. And when Tess reached out to Leading the Future, they sent an emailed response attributed to spokesperson Jesse Hunt who wrote that the group complies with all applicable laws, and he called the complaint from the Campaign Legal Center merely a desperate ploy for attention from Public First, Anthropic, and the groups aligned with their outside organizations. Anthropic was not part of this suit, neither was Public First. And so what this really said to us is that not only is this a way for Leading the Future and their candidates of choice and shell companies in Nevada to really get their hands dirty with campaign finance, it's also a way for knife fights within the AI industry itself, for example, between OpenAI and big time rival Anthropic, to be throwing punches at each other as well.

Brian Barrett: I love it when random organizations and companies catch strays when you're just reporting something totally separate. It's always a little thrill and always an indication that to your point, yeah, there's a lot more going on here than we maybe even realized when we started reporting these out. We're only a few weeks away from the midterms now, Leah.

Leah Feiger: Countdown begins.

Brian Barrett: Countdown began. But how big of a role are these sort of AI-oriented PACs playing in this election? How big of an impact are they going to have? I just remember, and listeners might too, crypto PACs actually had a pretty decent impact on the previous election cycle. They had a ton of money and they spent it in smart places. Are we seeing an equivalent with AI or not quite or more so? Help me think about how to wrap my head around the degree to which they are impacting this election.

Leah Feiger: It's a really good question, and I really want to make sure that we get across to our listeners here is that you have this network donating to races on either side of the aisle, which is a little bit more unusual. When you're looking at, for example, Fairshake, the major crypto PAC of elections passed, it felt very, "This is Republican, this is Democrat, there's no split in the middle." What these pro-AI super PACs are doing right now is something that's a little bit more interesting to me, which is future building. They are picking candidates that are perhaps not even in the most competitive seats right now for Republicans or Democrats, but they are picking candidates that will be able to become their biggest allies in Congress. And so that has way further impact than just this election. That has impact beyond 2028. We're talking about shoring up a support for AI in the United States government for, honestly, without sounding incredibly dramatic, but generations to come to be able to make these viewpoints, whether that's deregulation or very light regulation or being pro-data center, if that's how you're able to swing it in all these different ways, it's a lot of future building right now.

Brian Barrett: All right, Leah, well, it's time to go from your favorite topic to your least favorite topic. We're going to do some consumer tech.

Leah Feiger: Zoë is somewhere in the Bay, just absolutely thrilled to not be discussing this with us.

Brian Barrett: I am going to call her later today and just make her talk about it with me.

Leah Feiger: Okay, good. Yeah, that seems fair.

Brian Barrett: This week, Apple announced some new products at a showcase in New York. Look, Leah, there's an Apple TV 4K, there's a new HomePod mini, there's a lineup of LG built locks and cameras and doorbells and thermostats. I am not going to make you talk about any of those.

Leah Feiger: Should I get any of them?

Brian Barrett: I think you're fine.

Leah Feiger: OK, great. Keep going.

Brian Barrett: The one I am going to make you talk about, or at least make you listen to me rant about just for a little tiny bit of time is the Apple HomeView. So this is Apple's first smart home hub. By that I mean Google and other and Amazon have had these before.

Leah Feiger: So this is like their Alexa?

Brian Barrett: Sort of, but with the display. So I have a Google version of this in my kitchen. I use it to set timers and to watch baseball games while I'm cooking and to play music. It can display a calendar, whatever. So Apple's is called the Apple HomeView. It's a 7-inch display, sits on your counter, or you can get a version that mounts on your wall. It's not crazy expensive for an Apple product, which is fine, neither here nor there. You can recognize people by their faces, runs on Siri AI. All that's fine. Here's the thing, it looks like an Apple Watch. It's like a big Apple Watch-type screen, so it's a square screen and it doesn't play video. There's no video apps. You can't pull up, at least not yet. So it's shaped like a square. The aspect ratio is weird to begin with, but then it doesn't have Netflix or MLB TV, which is what I would be interested in, Prime Video, HBO Max, all the things. I feel like if you have a display, you probably want to watch things on it.

Leah Feiger: Well, also just even in this era of, if we're talking about cooking, you're able to access something, this is supposed to be in your kitchen, this is supposed to be in home areas. I don't know. I would want to watch cooking videos on Bon Appétit or TikTok. What is the point of this?

Brian Barrett: 100%. We asked Apple about this. I forced our Gear editor, Julian, to ask Apple about this, and their answer was basically, "Look, if developers want to make CarPlay apps, then they'll show up on this thing," so there's a world in which it could happen, or you can always go through Safari and type in hbomax.com and log in like a dweeb.

Leah Feiger: Like a dweeb?

Brian Barrett: Leah, like a dweeb. Exactly.

Leah Feiger: Absolutely not.

Brian Barrett: So, look, I think this is an interesting device. I'm glad Siri AI is better now because they're working with Google to make it better. People will be surprised at how useful it is, but the fact that it is like, "Yes, you can play Spotify," but you can't watch anything on the screen. That's what a screen is. It's what it's for, Leah.

Leah Feiger: I'm a little bit confused here because I have to say I'm sort of an Apple's fan. I love Apple products. I really, really do. And I have never interacted with an Apple product where I've said, "Oh, huh, I could have skipped this one." I think I could skip this one.

Brian Barrett: I think I could too, which is I actually was looking forward to it. I kind of like, yeah, I don't love the Google thing I've got. It's fine, but it's pretty old. It doesn't work with Apple Music. It's just like there's a lot that I ... But I don't think I can commit to this unless developers get on board, but I don't know why they would.

Leah Feiger: How much AI is this using? This is obviously requiring it if it's a, "Hey, can Siri play me whatever music station?"

Brian Barrett: It's got Siri AI baked in. So basically in that sense, it's like an Alexa, a little bit smarter, but you will still probably, I think it'll be just better at doing those things and better. I think there's a generation of devices like this where if you asked it any question other than what time is it, they'd kind of freak out and show you a webpage with mixed results. This should be more conversational. It should be able to actually give fuller answers to things, but I don't know that you would want it just for that. It's not like it can do something different than your phone can do and your phone's already probably nearby.

Leah Feiger: Yeah, no, I would just prop my phone up. Sorry to hear that. Sorry for you, Brian.

Brian Barrett: Thank you. Thank you for just letting me have a safe space to let my feelings out.

Leah Feiger: Twice a year.

Brian Barrett: All right, Leah, before we go to break, I have a quick quiz for you. I'm going to read four names from the AI industry. And, Leah, I want you to let me know how many seem familiar. Are you ready?

Leah Feiger: Yep.

Brian Barrett: Okay. Sam Altman.

Leah Feiger: Familiar.

Brian Barrett: Mira Murati.

Leah Feiger: Also know who Mira Murati is.

Brian Barrett: Susan Milner.

Leah Feiger: Nope.

Brian Barrett: Craig Dalton.

Leah Feiger: Nope.

Brian Barrett: Wow. Well, Leah, it makes sense that you only recognize Altman and Murati because Milner and Dalton don't exist. You know who insists that they do exist when asked the same set of questions?

Leah Feiger: I'm going to infer based on the title of senior writer Kate Taylor's excellent story, men. Men, Brian.

Brian Barrett: Men.

Leah Feiger: Men.

Brian Barrett: Men. It's true. It's men. In a new survey of more than 5,400 Americans, Harvard researchers found that more than half of men claim to know these fictitious AI luminaries. Women also did, but to a much lesser degree, so around 40% of women. So by a sizable chunk more, men are super confident with all the wrong answers. Does this come as a surprise to you, Leah?

Leah Feiger: I mean, of course not. And there's a lot more to expound upon there that is probably not incredibly scintillating. What I would say though is I'm fascinated by a confirmation of biases here, but also fascinated by the fact that this is such a new industry that, of course, there is a not insignificant group of people saying, "I already understand every single thing about it. I've never been more included. No one knows more about the 1993 player of the year MVP than I do." That is such an easy jump. Tell me how this was all found out.

Brian Barrett: So Harvard University study, and I think it's important to say we led with this tidbit because it is so fun and damning, but there's a lot more here to it. It was actually a pretty extensive survey. So Laura Manley of the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center was involved in the study, told WIRED that they're seeing that men are more optimistic and more confident across the board when it comes to AI. That of course veered into overconfidence in this case. We found that across a year of media coverage, men were named in headlines about AI about 14 times as often as women. And part of that is a function too of obviously the top AI executives skew heavily male, but it also includes AI experts. Men tend to be quoted as AI experts a lot more than women. I think the whole point of this study is where are the sort of gender dividing lines in AI? How is this industry, as it continues to transform the world, it does appear to be transforming the world differently depending on if you're a man or a woman, and your attitude towards it kind of reflect that.

Leah Feiger: I wonder if so much of that has to do with not being concerned about the guardrails. I'm going to have to delve into this study myself. I'm going to make Kate tell me all about it over lunch or something, but there is something very fascinating to me about when I'm thinking of some of the biggest critics of AI, I'm thinking of Timnit Gebru, who we had all of this excellent coverage on in the last few weeks. I'm thinking of people who are not just tearing the industry down, but saying like, "Hey, here are the issues here." And you obviously have some of that from the very top. We've been talking about Anthropic, we've been talking about [Dario] Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, but there does very much feel like that gap to me. It's really interesting. I'm fascinated by it.

Brian Barrett: No, I am too. And I think it is something that the industry does need to address and be aware of. It also all ties in too, I think, with WIRED senior correspondent Lauren Goode wrote a feature last month for our WIRED Women issue about who's the most powerful woman in tech. And there's not really an answer because there aren't these sort of cults of personality that are built up around, even though there are several very powerful women in tech and in AI, they don't have this sort of gravitational pull for better or worse, often for worse, that the Sam Altmans and the Elon Musks of the world do. Coming up after the break, we are sharing our WIRED/TIRED picks for the week. Stay with us.

Leah Feiger: It is time for our WIRED and TIRED segment. Whatever is new and cool is WIRED, and whatever passé thing we're over is TIRED. Brian, what do you have?

Brian Barrett: I'm going to go on faith because I have not seen this movie, but people I respect have seen this movie and they love it.

Leah Feiger: Is it Digger?

Brian Barrett: It is Digger.

Leah Feiger: I'm seeing it tonight.

Brian Barrett: I'm going to say—

Leah Feiger: I'm so excited.

Brian Barrett: I'm curious what you have to say, but I'm going to say that Digger is WIRED, if only because I think even not having seen the movie, I'm going to say it's WIRED because it has sparked, I think, a really interesting conversation, not just about Digger, but about how we talk about climate. Whether you like the movie or not, whether you though it was effective at communicating that as senior writer Molly Taft does at WIRED, or whether you think it's garbage as many other people do, it has at least forced a conversation about how we talk about climate. And I think we're in this place where so many people seem to have moved on from climate conversations. You've got the sort of AI extremists who say, "Oh, that's a solved problem. It's fine." You've got the sort of MAGA contingent who says, "Oh, it was all overblown. Why are we worried about it?" I think climate has left the conversation from a couple angles. So whatever you think about Digger, the fact that it has got the conversation moved beyond the movie itself into how we talk about climate, I'm supportive of that. That's WIRED for me. And I'll use my TIRED to complain about the Apple Home View again. I think you got to figure that out.

Leah Feiger: You hate it.

Brian Barrett: I don't hate it. I'm not mad. I'm disappointed, Leah.

Leah Feiger: This is a plea to anyone that works at Apple, hear Brian's prayers. Help him out. OK. Those are pretty good. Mine are so internety, it hurts. I feel like you're going to know exactly what they are and could probably say them for me. My WIRED is that Girls is coming back.

Brian Barrett: That was my guess.

Leah Feiger: I am so excited. Oh, my gosh. It is millennial catnip. Hannah Horvath and Marnie Michaels will be revisiting our screens at some time soon. HBO, this Girls revival is everything I care about. I really, really can't wait, as you know, because I messaged you about it so many times yesterday.

Brian Barrett: Which one are you?

Leah Feiger: Nope. Not playing that game. Absolutely not.

Brian Barrett: OK. All right.

Leah Feiger: This is not the Sex and the City, who's Carrie? Who's Samantha? All of the characters of Girls are equally amazing and terrible. The only thing that I will absolutely say is obviously you want to be Shoshanna and you do not want to be Jessa if you've re-watched it in your 30s.

Brian Barrett: That's good advice. That's actionable advice.

Leah Feiger: My TIRED is also incredibly internet-coded, which is I ... Let me take you into the corner of my internet and my algorithm, which is the Kelly Clarkson bird debacle at the magic store in Brooklyn.

Brian Barrett: That's everybody's corner. That's everybody's corner of the internet.

Leah Feiger: I actually don't think it is because I tried explaining this to my husband yesterday and he was like, "Are you having a stroke?"

Brian Barrett: Oh, no.

Leah Feiger: "What are you saying?"

Brian Barrett: He's got to get on board, Rodrigo. Come on, man. Catch up.

Leah Feiger: He's got to get on board. Basically, real quick for our listeners, Kelly Clarkson, noted singer and talk show host, walked into a magic store in Brooklyn and tried to buy an animatronic bird named Molly for $15,000 and was told, "Absolutely not. Molly's not for sale." The back and forth has been incredible, just truly incredible. Kelly Clarkson posted about them and the store returned. According to an interview in New York Magazine yesterday, the store is getting harassed. Kelly Clarkson has doubled down. There's a bird, animatronic bird maker that lives in the woods upstate who only has made two of these. It's a core component of the magic show. Anyway, it was really fun for me for I think about an hour or two, and now I'm over it. So that's my TIRED.

Brian Barrett: I think much like Girls, much like Girls, you don't want to be anyone in this situation. I don't think anyone comes out looking good.

Leah Feiger: Very bad.

Brian Barrett: I think it's all a mess.

Leah Feiger: Except for Molly, the animatronic bird.

Brian Barrett: Except for the animatronic bird, which does look pretty cool.

Zoë Schiffer: That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Pran Bandi, who's also our New York studio engineer. It was fact-checked by Matt Giles and Daniel Roman. Marc Leda is our San Francisco studio engineer. Kate Osborn is our executive producer, and Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.