Meta wants an AI agent in your glasses

On Thursday, Meta showed off the Muse Charm device at the company's Connect event. It is a small, pocket-sized device meant to work as a personal AI assistant, called Muse. The idea is that it should go with you everywhere, including via AI glasses.

An example from Meta: You look at a shopping list through your glasses and ask Muse to handle it for you. The camera in the glasses sees what you are looking at, while your voice says what you want help with. Muse then uses services and apps you have given permission to in order to carry out the task.

In an interview, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes which everyday tasks he himself would give Muse, including finding subscriptions you no longer use.

Muse is also getting a new feature called Realtime Avatar, which gives the assistant a more lifelike expression. It can be connected to work tools such as Notion, GitHub and Box, and access via glasses is coming over the next few months.

New glasses on the way

The Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 glasses are available now. A model with audio, Ray-Ban Meta Audio, arrives on October 13 and has open earbuds as well as access to the assistant. A pair of VR glasses from Meta is planned for spring 2027, while the Ray-Ban Display glasses are getting new features such as navigation, calendar, spatial audio and access to Threads.

Security and access

The big question is how much access you give the assistant. Muse runs on a separate computer in Meta's cloud (that is, on Meta's own servers, not on your device). An extra security layer called Sentinel can allow, block or ask you before Muse carries out an action, and Muse cannot override that decision. Meta says that passwords for services are only used in approved requests.

Later this year, Meta is also planning a specially protected server (a so-called confidential VM) designed to prevent Meta's own employees from seeing your data.

That doesn't solve every problem, though. Security researcher Patrick Wardle recently found a setting on Mac computers that malicious software could exploit to redirect voice messages and steal Muse's access key. Meta fixed the bug by September 22. Meta stresses that the code would already have to be running locally on the machine to exploit the hole, but Wardle points out that users can still be tricked into running malicious commands.

What it means for you

If you use Meta glasses or are considering buying a pair, this is a hint of what they will be able to do in the future, even though it doesn't fully work yet. If you already have Ray-Ban Meta glasses, you can keep an eye on when Muse and the new features reach you. Also check which apps and services you give Muse access to when the option appears, so you control what the assistant may do on your behalf.