THE CRUNCH
Meta's AI agent Muse can now place phone calls to US businesses on behalf of its users, with the feature available to all paying subscribers after a September test. Announced by Meta's chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, the ability covers the calls people dread: booking restaurant reservations, scheduling appointments, or sitting through hold music at the cable company or the DMV.
The calling feature sits inside Meta's subscription plans, which start at $20 a month for 500 million Muse tokens per week, rising to $100 a month for 3 billion tokens for heavier users. Muse itself has passed 10 million users, according to the company.
Early access users suggest the agent can already handle these tasks. Matt Schlicht, a Moltbook creator and Meta Superintelligence employee, shared a recreation of a phone conversation Muse had with a Volvo dealership to find the next available appointment, noting it waited on hold to get the information. Notably, in that call Muse did not explicitly identify itself as an AI, though it said it was calling on Schlicht's behalf and transcribing the conversation.
That disclosure gap has precedent. In September, Amazon blocked Muse from shopping on the site, citing among its concerns that the agent failed to identify itself when browsing and appeared to capture customer credentials. Reception on the phone can be mixed too: many businesses hang up as soon as they realise an AI is on the line, a problem serious enough that Meta temporarily tested human operators for Muse in September. That echoes Google's Duplex, where one in four calls was handled by a human at launch.
Meta is not alone here. Google's Gemini, the startup Instinct and xAI's Grok Bot can already place calls, while OpenAI's ChatGPT Dots and Anthropic's Claude Duet still cannot. Separately, Meta has added the option to give Muse a dedicated email address, and Wang says that feature will soon reach free users, unlike calling, which stays paid-only for now.