Rival consumer AI agents Instinct and Meta's Muse both add the ability to make phone calls
2026-09-17
TechCrunch reported that rival AI agents Instinct and Meta's Muse have both added the ability to make phone calls, which people can use to make restaurant reservations and cancel subscriptions.
Significance 3: A notable competitive feature expanding consumer agents' real-world transactional authority, below a frontier-capability threshold.
Implications · machine-drafted, not owner judgment
Both Muse and rival agent Instinct adding the ability to place phone calls pushes consumer AI agents further into real-world transactional authority, raising the same accountability question tracked for enterprise sales agents: who is responsible when an agent's call goes wrong, and is the agent designed to be able to say no on the user's behalf.
- Any reported case of a Muse or Instinct call causing an unintended commitment or charge
- Whether either product publishes a policy on what the agent can commit to on a call
Sources
- press Rival AI agents, Instinct and Meta's Muse, both add the ability to make calls retrieved 2026-09-17