Welcome to the Silo, where we're collecting chatbot avatars like they're Pokémon. I'm your host, Will Saddleberg. This week, Allison Johnson of The Verge joins me to discuss her experience of using Muse, Meta's new agentic AI chatbot meets Tamagotchi clone. Allison wrote a fantastic piece summarizing her experience of having Muse spend her money on her behalf while trying to accomplish various tasks. And we talk about all of that: why quitting Google feels like a much taller hill to climb than quitting Meta, and what we're supposed to do with all of this supposedly agentically saved free time.
All of that, plus some thoughts on the iPhone 18 Pro's variable aperture, Allison's hands-on impressions of the iPhone Duo, and much more. All of that starts right after this message from our sponsor, NordVPN.
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I'm thrilled to welcome The Verge's Allison Johnson back to the show, who is here because she has been using Meta's Muse agent, and I have a lot of questions about it. And I loved her article on it, and I'm too scared to sign up for Muse myself. So, welcome to the show, Allison.
Thank you for having me. I'm happy to provide this service of engaging with AI that...
Yeah, with Meta products. I did set up this interview over Instagram DMs with you, so maybe I'm a little more guilty than I was, but...
Absolutely. Um, you wrote an article called 'Meta's AI agent is a cute little guy who's great at spending my money,' which — okay, just the headline alone, great headline, but also this has been my exact complaint about every agentic thing anyone has demoed since we started hearing the word 'agentic' is that it's like, you guys just want to spend my money. So, before we even get into the article, let's start there. Is that still kind of how you're feeling, you know, a couple days later about Muse, or agentic applications in general?
Yeah. And to be fair to Muse, I've been using it for about a week. Um, so there's a bit more onboarding, you know, that kind of happens in the beginning. But yeah, that's been the overwhelming thing that it's good at is once you like connect your credit card details, um, it can just — you can fire off transactions, you know. And I had a backlog of stuff. I'm like, I just need to get on the Breville website and order this part for my espresso machine. Put it off for years, like for no reason. Yeah.
Um, I was like, 'Okay, I'll have Muse go do that.' It's like, 'Great. Found it. Done.' Um, but and then the other stuff that it's supposed to be more of your assistant, your, um, 'oh, go, you know, take care of this task for you' — that's where it slows down and it's a little murkier. And it feels like, did I spend just the same amount of time like going back and forth with this cute little Meta guy to, you know, accomplish this task as I would have if I just opened the website I needed to go to? Yeah. I remain like unconvinced that an AI agent like this one is saving tons of time on these sorts of things.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's start there, I guess, because actually, you know what? Let's start with the labor of opening a website, because I...
Let's start with big picture stuff. So, first of all, if you don't know what Muse is, let's just establish this off the jump. It's like it's an AI agent trying to do things for you. Think like, you know, Gemini's agentic tools or whatever, but combined with like a Tamagotchi basically, right? Like that's how I see it. Like it's this little guy who wants to, as you said, cute little guy who wants to spend your money. Um, part of why I liked your article so much is because I have very similar tasks built up in my backlog of like, 'I need to do this,' and it's never anything that is like actually that much of a heavy lift, but it's still kind of like there's some barrier — even just buying things online or emailing someone about a replacement part or a service that you need them to do an estimate maybe. Why is that so — why does that feel like such a mentally taxing task these days?
I know. I don't get it. I spend so much time thinking about this, and it's, you know, I'll get like a — I'll get a new planner and I'll like, you know, make my to-do list and I'll have it perfect and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm on top of everything,' and I'm like going through my backlog of tasks, then something happens — like everyone in my house gets sick or whatever — and then that's over and it's back to chaos. So that's my experience.
Oh my god, the planner trap, I'm going to call it, right? Look, I love people who are more organized than me. I'm jealous of people who are more organized than me. I wish I was more organized. I've done every — I've done planners. I've done to-do apps. I've tried every to-do app. Name one that has more than 10,000 downloads on the Play Store, and I've tried it. Um, I've tried just like pen and paper lists. The best I've gotten so far is that behind my left shoulder there's a — I put a large whiteboard on my wall maybe like six months ago.
And that is the best that I've come to is just having — I've made some grids on it and it's just blank spaces that I can erase and put whatever I want on there. It's not organized. It is very like stream of consciousness, but it is the closest I've come to being like, I can glance over there and be like, 'Oh yeah, okay. I need to remember to do this today.' And even then, I sometimes fall behind and I'm like either not looking at the list or I'm like, 'Oh, I forgot to put this, this, and this on the list.' The planner trap is serious and it's a place that I think AI could probably shine and yet kind of doesn't because you need to give it so much of that context anyway that it's never going to know. You know, even if you connected it to your email and your calendar and your messages, like everything, I still think that would only probably fill like 50% of what I actually need to get done because sometimes it's as simple as mow the lawn, which is a task on my whiteboard right now. I haven't texted anybody about it. I haven't emailed anybody about it. So, the AI bot's not going to know unless I tell it. And at that point, I already have it written anyway. So, all of that brings us back to the agentic AI stuff, and this is where this should shine, but it still kind of feels like at least right now there's so much monitoring that you have to do in this case. And especially because basically all of these tasks have to do with some sort of payment, right? Like either you're buying something or you're paying for a service. Um, does it feel like you're more organized at the end of all of this?
So, no. I did like — I did get some things truly done that I've put off for a long time, like I wrote about this, but um, like downgrading our security — like home security system from like a more expensive subscription tier that we don't need. And I'm like, we could save 10 bucks a month if I just call them and downgrade it. Years have gone by. Um, and I'm like, I just need to make a phone call. That's horrifying. Um, so, you know, it's partly the thing of like, I'm sitting down with a new tool. What can I do? And that helped, um, you know, get this going. But I kind of — I gave Muse. I was like, yeah, I need help with this security system thing. I'm pretty sure we could downgrade our account. I don't know what any of the plans are called. And it goes and it's, you know, there's a very cute little avatar. It's kind of like a snowman bear puppy, and it's like its little paws are typing on a computer. It was like, 'Oh, I'm working for you.'
Did Meta try to just combine a bunch of cute different things into one ultra cute thing? Is that the goal with these? They are just hitting us over the head with cuteness. And uh, Victoria Song actually wrote about the cuteness trap for us. What's the name of hers? She gave it a great like blurbo. Maybe...
Borbo. Oh my god. Blurbo. Yeah. I just went with whatever it defaulted to. I was in a haze.
Marley. Yours is Marley. Yeah.
I'm like, 'Okay, fine.' Um, so Marley's out there, and he's like, 'Well, I need access to your security account.' I'm like, 'Sure, great idea.' So, you know, and you do this like secure login stuff and it's a little bit — it seems a little bit like password manager-ish where it's like, 'Okay, it lives in this vault over here and Marley's not running around with the password for your home security system hopefully.' Um, but it gets in there and it's like, 'Okay, you're on this plan. Yeah, you could downgrade to this plan. Uh, but you got to call.' Like, I knew that, but then it's like the phone number's in front of me, the name of the like...
Right. All the — it's all done. It's right there.
I'm like, it's all right there. I'm like, I will just call — like I'll pick up my phone right now and do it. It took a total of five minutes. And then it was done. Um, and I told — I was like, we did it. You know, he's like, 'Good job. Maybe just save 10 bucks a month.' But I don't know. So I think there is like a — it feels less arduous for me to type in plain text something like, 'Hey, I need help with this thing,' and it goes and gets the relevant information, puts it in front of me. Like I could have looked all that up in my account in less time. Like I'm sure, um, but that I just keep not doing it. So I think that's like where it's appealing, um, and maybe potentially helpful. Of course, it's more helpful if you log into every single service you subscribe to, give access to every calendar and email address that you have, which is a whole can of worms. Um, yeah. But yeah, for that purpose, and I sort of wonder like, does that stick, you know? Do I get to a point where I'm like, I've done everything on my to-do list, I'm living in just perfect nirvana of like nothing in our house is broken? Um, I don't first of all think that state exists, and second of all, like just more crap is going to come up, and then is it going to feel eventually too arduous to type into my little AI agent like, 'Hey Marley, we got to call blah blah blah' again? I don't know. That's where I start spiraling. I'm like, I don't know if this is actually going to be good for humanity in the end.
So okay, so much to unpack. Okay, first of all, you've inspired me here in that I think I have found — I think my brain has finally been like, 'Oh, I know what I want this tech for,' and it's one thing and I would only need to do it once every hopefully like three or four years. But um, I've been putting off — if we're talking about things we've been putting off, I have been putting off diving into my family's Verizon plans.
Oh, I am the manager of the Verizon plan that my sister and my parents are on, but I am...
Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. The thing is, and nobody talks about this, and I think we should, Verizon's website is one of the worst websites I've ever been on. It breaks. It will break by you clicking a link. You'll be like, 'I want to view — can you tell me more about this plan?' Like in your account settings, 'Can you tell me about this plan I'm looking at switching to?' And it will just give you an error message or spit you to a white screen. It's like — and it's been this way for years. I have not had better luck with the app.
Um, I've had these issues with my FiOS account too, my home internet account. And I love FiOS otherwise, but I have had — uh, you know, anytime I need — it feels like there is a skin of a modern website laid over something that is still from 2002. And it's crazy. It drives me nuts.
And as a result, uh, myself and my sister and my parents are all on like completely different Verizon plans under this one account. And I am sure there is money to be saved. But then you start adding in the fact that I have like a smartwatch plan and my FiOS plan is giving us a discount and like how does all of this end up adding together to save us money? And like I have opened this tab like three or four times this year only to remember the issues, and then I'm like, 'You know what, I don't want to do this right now. It's a Sunday. I should be doing something else.'
And that's what this is for, I think. Now I'm still scared. I think I'm specifically scared to let Meta do it, and I'm scared in general at the moment to let agentic AI do it. But in two years maybe...
This is exactly what I would want that for because it's not really a phone call. I guess you could place the phone call. The easiest solution would probably be to literally go to a Verizon store and do it in person and have someone else deal with the tech side. But, you know, short of me leaving the house, I think this is the way to do it. Um, but that sort of brings me to the Meta part of it, right? Um, do like — was Muse successful in doing a lot of the stuff that you asked it to do, or at the very least like half successful?
How does that balance with the Meta of it all? Yeah, that's what just feels the ickiest and most nebulous. Is like, sure, um, I believe there are smart, um, very, you know, good people behind this product who work hard at Meta and want to make it safe for people. Um, you know, Meta as a corporation, I don't trust like super well. I — such a top-down company. Like it is impossible — like in a way, you know, it is very difficult to...
Look, I don't feel that way about like Satya Nadella at Microsoft, even though I have lots of issues with how Microsoft is run. I don't — look, I don't have like negative feelings towards him per se. That's not true of like a Mark Zuckerberg. I'm like, 'No, no, no.' Like, this is your baby. You are the director here. Like you are driving every decision. So when things — when there's bad stuff happening at Meta, which is not infrequent, it's like, well, yeah, I know what the cause is here. It's the guy. It's the guy who's been here since 2003.
Yeah. You're like, that's the face of my fear of like, you know, and you just think back to like all the stuff I used to upload to Facebook and all the status updates and photos, and even when my kid was younger, um, you know, posting photos of him to Facebook so that the extended family could see him, and it was just kind of like — it's just how you communicated, and that has sort of fallen apart now. And I log into Facebook by accident, you know, like once a month, and it's horrifying.
For me it's the restaurants that don't have actual websites and they just have a Facebook page. It's like once a month I'm like, I'm on Facebook. But it's like so often it's like a really good restaurant and you're like...
That's the thing. It's so annoying.
They're all like good restaurants. It's just that they're run by people who are like not web developers and they're like, 'Well, I'm not going to build a website. I'm not even going to turn to Squarespace or something. I'll just make a Facebook page because, you know, everybody I know is on Facebook.' They — I feel like they tend to be like...
I'm picturing like a 50-year-old here. Like that's like running the restaurant. They're like, 'I'll make the Facebook page.' And no, it's so for me like...
Oh my god, the social media era — because I know everything is social media now, but it's not — when we talk about using Facebook to share photos of your friends and family to your friends and family, that era is long dead.
And it's so weird to me because like that was so much of my adolescence. Like I made a Facebook account when I was 14 or whatever and used it heavily through — I don't remember when in college I like pretty much stopped using it, but certainly, you know, I remember using it a lot as like a freshman or a sophomore, and then junior, senior year, 2015, 2016, starting to dwindle. And certainly by the pandemic it's like I'm never opening this thing. Like my profile picture — I think my profile picture on there is from 2020 and has never been touched again. I used to open it to respond to like birthday wishes, but those dwindled to a point where it's just kind of like a couple of my relatives — no disrespect, I'm sorry for not answering — and then a few like assorted friends here, and it's like, look guys, I'm 31. I'm not going to respond to the birthday wishes anymore because I don't want to open up Facebook for this. So, we're done.
It's so unpleasant. But yeah, it's like there's so much of my information and data that like Facebook and then Meta as a company has. I still use Instagram quite a bit. I use Threads. They feel — I don't know. I logically know they're Meta products and it's all one big entity, but um, so I don't know if I can quite do that with Muse. It does feel — so there was a weird — I was like, you know, what does it know? What does it not know? When I'm working with — when you're doing something with Gemini, I'm like, it knows everything. And that's just what it is. You know, it'll pinpoint my location to an uncomfortable degree, Gemini frankly. Like, it doesn't just say Buffalo or even the more specific like technically suburb I live in, which I'm not going to say. It will say like the technical neighborhood that Google Maps has me labeled in within the suburb of Buffalo that I live in. And I'm like, that's not that big of a — like we're talking about like seven or eight blocks that fall under this label here. I'm a little uncomfortable that you're...
Right. And I've like just everything I have wrapped up in Google Maps and Gmail and the calendar. And I'm sort of like weirdly more okay with that because it just feels like what's the alternative? And there are — and stronger people than I — go find them. With Meta, I was like, um, okay, I don't think it knows my kid's name. And I was like, I'm not going to say it. And then um, but I was going back and forth with Muse and I eventually started just like — yeah, I was typing and then I was like, I want to be on the couch and talk to this thing. So, I was doing like voice transcription on the app and I just like said his name without really meaning to, and I was like, 'Oh, well.' And I kind of just kept going. But you can see what it — you know, it has one of those pages where it's like, 'Here's what I know about you.' And it was like, 'Son's name, Lennox, 5 years old, blah blah blah, husband doesn't like camping, thinks it's dirty.' And I was like, 'Oh my god, it just grabbed those details.'
Yeah. So, which is, you know, in theory the thing that makes it more useful and better and makes it just feel ickier and creepier for all the above reasons. It doesn't — when I um, yeah, I don't get creeped out by Gemini as much as I do with Meta stuff. And I probably should be, though.
I know. I don't know how to square this because like I am uncomfortable with the amount of data I know Google has on me and I totally agree with you. It's like it does feel a little bit like — unlike Facebook or even Instagram and Threads — like I've never had the Threads app on a phone and so therefore I'm never on Threads. I just like don't even think to open it. Um, and I've been trying to not use — like every few months I'm like, I can just put these apps back on my browser at least, and then like I end up scrolling for an hour at one point one night and I'm like, nope, just got to sign back out because clearly I cannot be trusted. And uh, yeah, it's a problem. Um, and even Instagram, you know, I like Instagram as a platform generally speaking, but um, it's like so many platforms for me, it's been death by a thousand cuts where it's just like a bad change after a bad change. Uh, and to the point where it's like, you know, I'm scrolling through like business post after business post after sponsored post, and then it's like, oh, by the way, your friend from college posted this six days ago. Um, sorry we didn't show it to you before now, but here you go. It's under seven restaurant special photos. I hope you enjoy looking at it. Six days. And by the way, you already liked it. And you liked it before you realized it was six days old. So now it looks like you were on their account.
Oh, the worst. This happened yesterday, by the way. This is not like — I'm not making something up. This happened yesterday.
Yeah. And so it's like I feel like you probably don't get that problem if you're on the app all the time, which I have obviously — again, I'm trying not to be.
But then put that stuff up at the top so that at least when I open it I see it and then I can get to the restaurant special for the restaurant down the street. That's fine. Um, but to that point, it's so easy to get off that stuff. Like I can close an Instagram or a Facebook and kind of not think about it for a lot longer than I can not look at Gmail or I can not do a Google search. Like those are ingrained actions in me at this point. And so I don't know where to — even if I felt like more uncomfortable than maybe I do, maybe I should or whatever, about the data Google has on me, like where do I take that? Like...
