Should you ask Meta's Muse to help manage your money?

For this week’s Top Story, we’re finding out if Muse is a good option for managing your money.

You’ve seen the ad on your feed with the squishy Tamagotchi-like stuffie offering you an easy way to “get things done.” The “things” include planning your workouts, shopping for groceries, making dinner reservations, preparing meeting docs and handling your finances. As we’ve learned from social media through the years, just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should. Let’s dive into the pros and cons of trusting Muse and other AI tools with your personal information and money.

The difference between chatbots and AI agents

On September 18, 2026, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, launched Muse in Canada as the first AI agent for everyday use. Unlike AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, which answer user questions and respond to prompts, an AI agent can independently complete tasks.

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Ask it to, and Muse can open a browser window on your computer, negotiate bills over email, book travel and manage online shopping carts. It can even make phone calls on behalf of some users in the United States.

Those capabilities, however, require granting significant access to devices, data and online accounts.

During sign up, Muse asks users to share their email, name and address, Meta account details, and payment information. Muse will also ask permission to access their inbox, calendar, business accounts, social media and bank accounts. While those permissions are optional, much of the personal finance functionality requires some additional authorization.

How an AI agent can save you money

With all that data and permission, Muse can analyze bank statements and build budgets, track and encourage long-term savings goals, flag and even cancel unused subscriptions, and help you sell items on Facebook Marketplace, according to Meta’s website.

“If you were going to book a trip for yourself using a chatbot, you would ask it for information on hotels and flights and car rentals and activities and things like that,” says London, Ont.-based technology analyst Carmi Levy. “With an AI agent, you tell it the kind of trip you want to take: where you want to go, what kind of budget you have, what your preferences are. Then it does all of those things for you: books the hotel using your financial information, buys your plane tickets and builds an itinerary.”

Such capabilities can offer Canadians real time and money savings, and even help them earn money. For example, Muse can help write Facebook Marketplace listings, set an appropriate asking price, answer inquiries and negotiate the deal.

“AI agents and personal finance are almost a dream combination,” Levy says. “You could unleash an AI agent on your personal financial situation. You can have it analyze your current status, what assets you have, what platforms you are engaged with. And you can ask questions on how to boost your returns, reduce your risk and take advantage of the latest market trends.”

The risks of using Muse to manage your money

Like all AI tools, however, Levy warns that AI agents are imperfect, and if things go wrong it could hit you directly in the wallet.

“There’s a significant amount of risk associated with handing your financial future and your financial affairs over to an automated bot that literally went live weeks ago,” he says. “It could ruin your financial future before you even realize you’re in trouble.”

Canadian financial institutions also need to comply with a lot of regulations to handle your money, and fraud is costly for them. That’s why your banking app automatically signs out after just a few minutes of inactivity and needs to text you a security code to do just about anything. “Meta is not a financial services company. It doesn’t operate that way. The protections are currently not in place,” Levy warns.

Furthermore, most Canadian financial institutions have a policy that protects users in the event of financial fraud, but their contracts usually only keep you covered if you keep your login credentials private.

“If there’s fraud on your account there’s a good chance that you won’t be protected, because you’ve allowed that third party in,” says Stacy Yanchuk Oleksy, the CEO of Alberta-based credit counselling and financial literacy non-profit Money Mentors.

Should Canadians use Muse and other tools to help manage their money?

Consider whether the risks are worth the benefits. Yanchuk Oleksy says it’s important to have a clear understanding of what you stand to gain from leveraging any tool, and what you stand to lose.

She explains that, for some, having access to an automated personal assistant around the clock that can take action on their behalf could have major benefits, especially when it comes to things like finding discounts or cancelling unnecessary subscriptions.

“The subscription model is based on human laziness. That’s why it’s profitable: because you sign up for a bunch of things and then you forget about it,” she says, adding that Muse can also “give you access to some information at two in the morning, when you’re up worried about your money.”

At the same time, Yanchuk Oleksy warns that offloading too much of your financial decision-making to AI can quickly lead to a loss of control and oversight. In fact, the CEO’s of both RBC and BMO advise Canadians not to give AI agents too much access to personal banking accounts. RBC is considering blocking Muse from accessing client information, and other financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Charles Schwab, are already limiting or blocking outside AI agents from operating on behalf of retail customers.   

Yanchuk Oleksy also notes that budget decisions are often based on human emotion and personal values as much as they’re based on logic or dollars and cents, meaning financial plans can’t be easily outsourced to AI.

When weighing whether Muse should be part of your financial life, Yanchuk Oleksy says it’s important to understand the risks and opportunities. “If you’re going to grant something access to that kind of personal information,” she says, “You better make sure you’re going to use it.” 

In other words: Don’t treat it like just another subscription.

Read more from this issue of The Get:

1. Where are the fallback and bridge jobs in Canada?!
2. Money coach Gina Judge on how to conquer a scarcity mindset
3. The real costs of daylight saving time for Canadians
4. Is cash still king? The pros and cons of fiat currency