Meta pauses Muse sharing feature after researchers find AI chats publicly accessible on the web

Meta has paused a sharing feature in its AI assistant Muse after researchers found that shared conversation URLs were publicly accessible on the web. The decision came after a security firm demonstrated that the links could be discovered through routine public records, exposing private chats to anyone who searched for them.

Security firm Claroc published a report this week finding more than 6,800 Muse links through public DNS records, which serve as a directory for web traffic. By searching those records, Claroc was able to view hundreds of Muse conversations. Among the exposed chats, the firm found a marketing company’s revenue review, a small business owner’s loan application, a workplace’s full-year staff calendar, and notes for a job candidate’s call with an AI lab. Ars Technica originally reported the research. The findings reveal how a feature designed to let users share AI conversations with friends or colleagues instead made sensitive personal and business communications available to anyone who knew where to look.

Muse builds each share’s web address from the share’s title, a short phrase describing the conversation, then a random ID, making links easy to reconstruct from DNS records. That structure meant the subject of a shared chat was effectively visible in the web address itself, before anyone even opened the page.

“The hostname usually gave away what a page held before we opened it, and since the link carries that same title and ID, a hostname pulled from DNS rebuilds the link,” Claroc said.

“However, we’ve paused this functionality while we review this report and consider changes to how these links can be discovered,” said Tracy Clayton, Muse spokesperson.

Rapid growth raises the stakes

Muse has reached 10.9 million downloads since its September debut, 10.2 million in the United States. It is one of only a dozen mobile apps to reach 10 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days, alongside Meta’s Threads and Disney+. The rest were largely mobile games, including Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, and Pokémon GO. Meta markets new apps across its other services, which today include 3.6 billion daily active users, and the company allocated 39% of its total advertising spend to market Muse in October, up from 23% in September. Muse now ranks as the 21st largest brand in the U.S. by advertising impressions this month, up from 73rd in September. The app’s daily active users reached 2.5 million for the first time on October 16, a 15% week-over-week increase. Muse retained its No. 1 rank on the U.S. App Store and has been No. 1 on Google Play over the past 30 days.

Muse had a 30% retention rate after seven days and 23% after 14 days in the U.S., compared to rivals’ average of 19% and 16%. ChatGPT saw 3.7 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days, while Grok saw 500,000 and Claude saw 200,000. Globally, ChatGPT reached around 15 million downloads in its first 40 days, benefiting from wider international reach. Muse is only available in the U.S. and Canada.

A familiar pattern for AI assistants

Conversations with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and xAI’s Grok have previously wound up on Google Search due to sharing features. Muse competes with those same AI assistants.