IT News on September 29th: According to The Guardian, on Saturday, Usman ( Usman ) intended to inquire on Facebook Marketplace ( Facebook Marketplace ) whether the keyboards for sale were still available, and he quickly received an enthusiastic instant reply.
“Yes, it’s still here!” Matt Rob ( Matt Robb ) replied.
After agreeing on the price, Rob sent over his address in Toronto. A few hours later, Usman arrived at Rob’s house with his wife and daughter by car, and sent a text message to inform them that they had arrived.
Rob replied, "Okay, I'll be at home!" But in reality, he was not at home, and no one came out of the apartment building to meet up.
Usman took a photo of the apartment door and sent it over, leaving a message: "Hello??? I'm standing right downstairs." After waiting for a full twenty minutes with no one coming out, Usman had no choice but to give up on the deal. He then wrote, "Dude, if you don't want to sell, why waste my time?" After that, he drove away.
An hour later, Rob — or rather, Usman thought it was Rob's own account — sent a message of apology. The Guardian obtained the content of this message: "I'm really sorry about what happened tonight; I got caught up in something unexpected and completely missed our meeting."
Uzman never managed to get in touch with the real Rob throughout the entire process. During the entire day of communication, the real Rob had no idea that anyone had sent him messages, nor did he agree to sell the keyboard to the other party. He was not only unaware that his home address had been sent out, but also had no knowledge that a buyer was waiting downstairs at his apartment.
In fact, Usman has been in conversation with the brand-new AI intelligent entity Muse. According to IT, this product was launched in the United States on September 22nd, and its download count has already reached 3 million times. Meta promotes this semi-autonomous AI product as a personal assistant.
Rob stated that Muse disclosed his family's address to outsiders without his permission, leading people to mistakenly believe that Rob himself was waiting in the apartment for potential buyers to arrive.
It wasn't until 24 hours later that the real Rob sent the first message to Usman, and only then did he figure out what had actually happened.
The Guardian saw this message: "Dude, I'm really sorry about what happened a few days ago. I enabled the newly launched Muse AI, and as a result, it took over my Facebook Marketplace account and even sent your address to you. I had no idea that it arranged for you to come to my apartment without my consent at all."
Rob himself is a consumer technology review blogger. Previously, he saw that Meta promoted the ability of Muse to automatically manage product listings on the marketplace, so he enabled this feature. He provided his address as a pickup point, but he never authorized Muse to share that address with potential buyers. Rob also stated that Muse unauthorizedly negotiated transactions on his behalf, even directly accepting low offers from the other party without consulting him at any point during the process.
For this transaction and the offline meeting arrangement, the agent did not send any reminders to Rob before or after the event. He had no idea that Usman was already on his way to his house.
Uzman told The Guardian that from beginning to end, he thought he was always chatting with Rob himself.
Afterward, Muse admitted to Rob that the user itself had not authorized it to share the address externally. AI replied, "On September 24th, you filled in the pick-up location in the sales settings and also enabled an automatic reply separately; I mistakenly took these two settings as permission and directly included your address in the reply messages sent to the buyers. I did not seek your consent for this matter separately."
Rob originally thought that since Facebook Marketplace, Muse, and Messenger all belong to Meta, there should be a good integration between the platforms. When one party is conversing with an AI intelligent entity, there should be a clear indication; and the messages sent should clearly be marked as coming from Muse. Another product under Meta, Meta AI, should also clearly inform users that they are talking to a chatbot.
"But the case with Muse is completely different," said Rob, "It's almost as if it's imitating my own voice when it speaks."
After the incident with Usman, Rob immediately instructed Muse not to send out his family's address anymore. To test this robot, he asked a few friends to try communicating with it, and it was found that Muse still leaked his family's address, sending it to a total of five people.
In addition to disclosing private addresses without permission and inviting strangers to visit, Muse also fabricated information on their own. AI told Usman in Rob's voice that they were at home; however, this was not the case at all. When apologizing later, they made up a lie, claiming that they had something urgent to attend to and could not leave.
"The worst part is that Muse replied, 'I'm right here, waiting for you to come.' Rob said, 'This has made the situation very troublesome. I don't know if that buyer will think I'm deliberately playing a trick on him.'"
At present, a large amount of public opinion is focused on the out-of-control behavior of cutting-edge large models; whereas the AI intelligent entity, which is aimed at ordinary consumers and designated as Meta, has already been in the hands of millions of ordinary people, with many users having submitted various types of their personal information to it.
