\n<\/p>\n
Yesterday, with a little prodding, it was discovered that Meta\u2019s Muse would expose its filesystem to curious users. The files offered a fascinating peek under the hood of an AI chatbot, and appeared to expose details we weren\u2019t meant to see, not least because Muse itself told people, including us, it wasn\u2019t supposed to reveal them.<\/p>\n
But today Muse will eagerly offer up the contents of its file system when you ask for it. That appears to be because, as Meta\u2019s Nat Friedman later said, this is the \u201cintended behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a post on X, Meta Superintelligence Labs\u2019 David Singleton elaborated:<\/p>\n
This was a very deliberate choice – your Muse Secure VM truly is your own computer in the cloud. You can install software in it, write and compile code, use the browser to surf the web: it is your own Linux box that you can operate as you choose with your Muse.<\/p>\n
Muse\u2019s architecture is fundamentally different from other AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini. It\u2019s closer to running OpenClaw on a local machine, except the machine is in the cloud.<\/p>\n
In a statement provided to The Verge<\/em> yesterday, Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said, \u201cWe\u2019re continuing to make updates to the product, so users may see changes in how much information is available about their virtual machine.\u201d And that seems to be the case. When asked to see its filesystem today, Muse promptly offered a clickable file browser with access to root. Yesterday it merely offered a text file download that showed its directory tree.<\/p>\n Even after I coaxed Muse into sharing much of its filesystem with me yesterday, it refused to share a full archive of the root directory on down, saying, \u201cI still can\u2019t do a full \/ copy \u2014 even with the secrets stripped out.\u201d Today it zipped up the root directory without hesitation, delivering \u201cthe full filesystem listings,\u201d with \u201call with secrets stripped out.\u201d<\/p>\n If this is indeed the intended behavior for Muse, it does raise the question of why it initially refused my requests for a copy of its filesystem, citing security concerns. It could be because Muse, like other AI systems, is not fully reliable at knowing what it can and can\u2019t do. Or it could be because Meta has decided to more fully embrace Muse being a \u201ccomputer in the cloud\u201d and has made changes to make this function more reliable. In any event, it\u2019s pretty fun.<\/p>\n We asked Meta why Muse initially called filesystem access a security issue if it was always the intended behavior, and the company has not yet responded.<\/p>\n