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Meta’s Muse AI agent is alleged to have accessed private messages without users’ permission. The company disputes the claim that it read a journalist’s private messages. Meta maintains that its AI does not read private communications.
Meta will unveil its first camera-free smart glasses, the Ray-Ban Meta Audio, at its Connect 2026 event. The lightweight 43-gram frames offer 12 hours of battery life, audio playback, voice messaging and integration with Meta’s AI, and are priced at $349. They are scheduled to ship in mid-October.
Meta is preparing to launch a new pair of smart glasses this fall that will not include a camera. The glasses will be equipped with six microphones to enable users to speak with Meta’s AI chatbot and Muse. The company has confirmed the camera-free design and the microphone array for voice interaction.
Meta has launched Muse, a personal AI agent that can read email, book travel, shop, and negotiate purchases using Stripe’s Link. It runs on a dedicated virtual machine in Meta’s cloud, is isolated by Sentinel, and offers a free tier with 100 million tokens per week and paid plans at $20 and $100 per month. Muse is initially available in the United States and will later support Meta AI glasses.
Meta unveiled Muse Spark 1.3, its most capable AI model, which its chief AI officer says matches Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1, outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 on coding tasks and surpasses any current Chinese model. The company will release the weights for version 1.2 but has not yet decided on publishing 1.3’s weights, citing EU AI Act compliance. Internally, Meta has softened employee-review language, dropping the “token-maxxing” metric and encouraging use of its autonomous agent, Hatch.
Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by U.S. states alleging that its Facebook and Instagram platforms were designed to addict children and misled consumers about the risks. As part of the settlement, the company will implement sweeping changes, including age-verification measures and restrictions intended to limit minors’ access to its apps.
Meta has released a new open-weight AI model, named Glimmer (also referred to as Muse Glimmer), that is licensed under Apache 2.0 and contains roughly 30 billion parameters. The model is specifically optimized for use by local, agentic AI applications and is being positioned as a key element of Meta’s renewed open-source AI strategy.
A New Mexico judge ruled that Meta must pay $567 million and implement changes to protect underage users after finding the company’s platforms created a public nuisance that harmed teens’ mental health. The order applies to Meta’s family of services and follows a court determination that the platforms contributed to the harm.
Meta is in discussions with Anthropic to lease computing capacity from its data-center facilities. The proposed arrangement would involve a multibillion-dollar commitment, roughly $10 billion over a two-year period, as the companies explore a long-term partnership for AI-related compute resources.
Meta has disabled a feature on Instagram that allowed users to generate AI-created images of public accounts, effectively stopping the platform’s AI image generator from accessing those photos. The removal comes after several days of criticism and backlash over the tool’s ability to produce deep-fake-style visuals.
Meta is developing a cloud-infrastructure business that will sell access to its AI computing power and models, positioning the service as a competitor to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The initiative is aimed at monetizing excess AI capacity through a dedicated cloud offering.
Google has placed limits on Meta’s access to its Gemini artificial-intelligence models, citing insufficient compute capacity to meet Meta’s demand. The restriction has disrupted and delayed Meta’s internal AI projects, including efforts that rely on Gemini for coding tools and chatbot development.
The U.S. government is urging Meta to submit its artificial-intelligence models for review, seeking a voluntary assessment of the technology. Meta remains the sole major American AI developer that has not entered into such an agreement, making it the last holdout among its peers.
YouTube has settled a lawsuit alleging social-media harm to minors, doing so before a second California trial on the issue proceeds. The settlement leaves the case against other platforms—Meta, TikTok and Snap—unresolved, with those companies continuing as defendants in the ongoing litigation.
The European Commission has ordered Meta to cease blocking third-party AI chatbots on WhatsApp and to provide rival AI assistants free access to the platform within five days. This interim measure is intended to prevent harm to competition while the antitrust investigation into Meta’s WhatsApp policies continues.
Meta has quietly incorporated a facial-recognition feature, dubbed “NameTag,” into its Meta AI app through a series of updates released this year. The code, intended for use with Meta’s upcoming smart-glasses, was discovered embedded in the app despite the feature not being publicly announced or released.
The Oversight Board has criticized Meta’s account-deactivation practices, saying the bans are implemented without clear due-process procedures and that the criteria for violations are opaque. It also noted that users receive minimal guidance or support when appealing decisions, and that the platform’s own rules for removing accounts are confusing and lack transparency.
WhatsApp has launched an Incognito Chat mode that uses Meta’s Private Processing technology. The new AI chat feature is designed so that Meta cannot access the conversations. The feature is positioned as the first AI mode on WhatsApp that claims to keep chats private from the platform.
Meta is facing a lawsuit from major book publishers alleging copyright infringement. The publishers claim that Meta and Mark Zuckerberg personally authorized and encouraged the alleged infringement. The lawsuit seeks damages for the unauthorized use of copyrighted material.
The European Union has determined that Meta is in breach of EU law because it has not taken sufficient measures to keep children off its Facebook and Instagram platforms. Regulators say the company’s current safeguards are inadequate to protect minors, prompting formal action against the tech giant.
Chinese regulators have blocked Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus, ordering the company to unwind the deal after a months-long probe into compliance with Beijing’s investment rules. The decision follows Manus’s relocation to Singapore in 2025, prompting Meta to halt the transaction under the authorities’ directive.
WhatsApp is testing a paid “Plus” subscription that costs roughly €2.49 per month. The service adds cosmetic upgrades, including new chat themes, stickers, expanded pinned chats and custom list options. Meta is rolling out the subscription as part of premium tiers across its apps.
Meta is developing a photorealistic, AI-powered 3D version of Mark Zuckerberg that can interact with employees, offering feedback and answering questions. The digital clone is intended to engage staff, serve as a conversational “boss,” and even stand in for Zuckerberg during meetings, according to multiple reports.
A former Meta employee is under investigation for downloading 30,000 private Facebook photos. The incident has raised concerns about data privacy. Meta is reviewing its security measures.
Meta is testing an Instagram Plus subscription service in several countries. The service will include premium features such as anonymous Story viewing and extended 48-hour Story durations. The rollout is part of Meta’s broader effort to introduce a paid tier on Instagram.
A jury found Meta liable for child sexual exploitation on its platforms, concluding the company misled users about the safety of its products. The court rejected Meta’s argument that such exploitation was inevitable, awarding a landmark verdict that the company knowingly harmed children for profit.
A New Mexico jury found Meta had violated state laws by failing to protect its platforms from child predators. The court ordered the company to pay $375 million in damages. The judgment was based on evidence that Meta misled users about child-safety measures.
Meta has decided not to shut down its Horizon Worlds virtual reality platform. The service will remain available to Quest headset users, with Meta stating it will continue to operate in VR for the foreseeable future. No immediate changes to access or functionality are announced.
Meta has acquired Moltbook, a social network designed for AI agents that functions like a Reddit-style platform populated by bots. In conjunction with the purchase, Meta hired the network’s creators, Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr, to join its team. The transaction’s financial terms were not disclosed, and the deal is slated to close in mid-March.
Regulators have reached out to Meta regarding its AI-enabled smart glasses after it was revealed that subcontracted workers in Kenya review footage captured by the devices, including intimate content such as nudity and sexual activity. The practice has sparked privacy concerns and led to a lawsuit alleging that Meta’s marketing promised users control over sharing such footage.