After Meta case: Apple tightens AI apps' access to messages

Apple has announced that the company is changing its privacy settings on Mac computers (macOS) so that it becomes harder for other apps to misuse access to users' message history.

The announcement came on Friday, two weeks after tech columnist Jason Aten said that Meta's new AI agent Muse sent him a notification he had not asked for. The notification referred to a conversation between him and a colleague in Apple's messaging app, Messages.

Aten said that he had never given Muse permission to read his messages and assumed it was forbidden.

Concern on social media

The case received a lot of attention on social media. Many pointed out that AI assistants with access to calendars, emails, messages and shopping accounts can be compared to a circular saw or other power tool: they can be useful, but can also do great damage if not used with care.

Meta's CTO, David Singleton, joined the debate with a response that, according to the source, seemed solid.

Two permissions must be granted manually

For Muse to read messages in Apple's Messages app, a user must grant the app two permissions themselves.

The first is called "full disk access": a system setting in macOS that gives an app access to virtually all files on the computer.

The second is a setting in the Muse app itself, which must be turned on to connect the app to Messages.