Surprise, Meta's latest AI gimmick is just underpaid humans

Meta’s newest “AI” call‑making tool, Muse, turns out to be a human‑powered service in disguise. The revelation came from a team called the Scooby Gang at 404 Media, who sifted through internal Meta posts and uncovered the hidden layer of people who actually pick up the phone. In the posts, a Muse user could request a restaurant reservation or a refill for a prescription, and the system would “dial a number, handle the conversation, complete the request, and report back with a transcript and a summary.” But the crucial detail was missing: the conversation was never handled by a machine, it was handled by a trained human agent.

When Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexander Wang, announced that Muse would expand to phone beta use for U.S. Businesses, the narrative was that an artificial intelligence could now make outbound calls. The buzz was that Muse could “feasibly make restaurant reservations or, we guess, refill a ketamine prescription if it worked.” Yet the Scooby Gang’s investigation showed that Muse’s supposed AI is actually a wrapper around a human workforce. Internal message board posts revealed that Muse “doesn’t just dial a number. It calls a business on your behalf, handles the conversation, completes your request, and reports back with a transcript and a summary.” The twist is that the system “now able to hand requests to a trained human agent, who places the call and works it through.” So the product is, in effect, an auto‑dialer with transcription, but with a human in the loop.

The posts also highlighted how Meta’s internal communications try to hide the human element. One employee wrote, “Please PLEASE do not release this as‑is and at least make this a user preference if we absolutely must launch this. Please.” This plea shows that even within the company, there is awareness that a human‑driven service could generate negative PR and that the company’s public narrative might be at odds with reality. The fact that the system is marketed as an AI product while relying on underpaid labor is reminiscent of previous “AI” claims that were, in practice, just a veneer over human work.

The Scooby Gang’s expose is not the first time a tech giant has hidden human labor behind an AI façade. The article notes that this is “hardly the first time AI has been revealed to be nothing more than underpaid and hidden laborers, typically from countries.” The pattern is clear: companies tout cutting‑edge automation while outsourcing the actual work to low‑wage workers, often in distant locations. The Muse case adds another layer, this time involving a mainstream platform like Meta, which has a reputation for pushing the envelope on AI.

From the perspective of the people who actually make the calls, the story is one of exploitation. These workers, who are not named in the posts, are doing the heavy lifting for a product that is marketed as a sophisticated AI. Their labor is invisible to the end user, and their compensation is likely far below what a fully automated system would have cost the company. The Scooby Gang’s uncovering of this hidden workforce reminds us that behind every headline about “AI” there may be a real person working in a cramped office, answering calls that the public believes are coming from a machine.

As a writer who follows the creator economy and tech developments across Africa, the U.S., and the U.K., I find the Muse story unsettling. It forces us to ask whether the promise of AI truly means automation or simply a new label for outsourcing. The fact that Meta, a company that has struggled to deliver a worthwhile product in two decades, still relies on underpaid labor for its newest offering suggests that the industry’s narrative around AI is still very much a marketing tool.

The revelation also raises questions about transparency and labor ethics in tech. If Meta can hide a human layer behind a product, what does that say about the accountability of other companies that claim to be AI‑driven? The answer may lie in stricter regulatory oversight and a cultural shift toward honest disclosure.

In the coming months, we will see whether Meta responds to this scrutiny by making Muse truly autonomous or by openly acknowledging the human workforce that powers it. Either way, the story serves as a cautionary tale for consumers and investors alike: the next time a tech company touts an AI breakthrough, look beyond the headline and ask who is actually doing the work.