Meta's Muse now calls businesses. They pay for it in staff time

You know the drill. The place is packed, the phone rings, and the caller just wants to know if there's a table for four at eight on Saturday. In the US, that caller is now increasingly not a person. Meta has taught its AI agent Muse to make phone calls.

What happened

Muse can now place outbound calls to US businesses for paying subscribers. Meta's chief AI officer Alexandr Wang announced it, TechCrunch reports. The feature has been in testing since September; until now only select early adopters could request access. Subscriptions run $20 a month (500 million tokens per week) or $100 (3 billion tokens), per the report. Wang's examples: cable companies, the DMV, insurers, restaurants without online reservations. Competitors are already there: startup Instinct offers something similar, and Google is testing the same idea for Gemini with US Pixel owners.

This isn't a convenience feature. It's a cost transfer.

Look closely at Wang's list. Almost every example is a place without a decent online path. The phone was the last interface agents couldn't use. Now they can.

Here's the part I find interesting: the caller pays Meta $20 a month. The business that picks up pays in staff minutes. When a call costs the caller next to nothing, there will be more calls. Follow-ups, price checks, "just a quick question". The bill lands with the receiver, not the sender.

It also shifts who gets seen at all. I've been arguing for weeks that agents are becoming gatekeepers: they pre-sort, compare, book. A business with clean online booking gets handled by an agent in seconds. A business that only answers the phone gets called, maybe brushes the agent off, and may never make the shortlist again. For the restaurants, clinics, tradespeople and mid-sized firms across Germany, Austria and Switzerland that still run on the phone, this isn't a US side story. It's a preview.

The catch: who's actually on the line?

TechCrunch notes that many businesses hang up once they realize an AI is calling. Understandable. In my view, not a strategy, because behind the agent there's often a real customer with real intent. And in September, 404 Media reported that in Meta's internal tests, trained humans could take over Muse calls. Meta said then the feature would reach the public only with proper disclosures. Translation: on the phone you can't be sure whether you're talking to a machine, a person, or both. In the EU, Article 50 of the AI Act has applied since 2 August 2026: people interacting with an AI system must, as a rule, be told so. If this comes to Europe, that disclosure belongs in the first sentence.

What I'd do now

• Count calls for one week: how many are standard questions (hours, availability, reservations, price)? Put exactly those answers online, as a booking link and in clear structure on your website and business profile.
• Set a phone rule for the team: treat an AI caller like a customer who sent someone. Answer standard questions; handle payments and anything confidential only through a verified channel.
• If you run outbound voice AI yourself: the first sentence says an AI is speaking. It's both an obligation and a trust play.

Bottom lineIf you don't offer an online path, agents will soon call you instead, and your team pays for every minute.

More on Muse: Meta's Muse builds apps from a sentence.