Instinct and Meta’s Muse are adding the ability to call businesses on a user’s behalf, offering a way to hand off chores that still require someone to pick up the phone. Instinct says its new Concierge feature can seek a restaurant reservation, join a dentist’s cancellation list or tackle a cable-bill problem. Both services are opening calling to limited groups first.
The September 16 announcements were reproduced in TechCrunch’s reporting by Ivan Mehta. Instinct founder Noah Shinn described early access for some users, with broader availability planned. Meta’s Ryan Fox said Muse’s calling beta reaches U.S. businesses and prioritizes people who had asked their assistant for the feature. Requesting it does not guarantee immediate access.
| Service | Phone tasks | Current access | Documented user controls |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instinct Concierge | Instinct advertises restaurant bookings, dentist cancellation lists and cable-bill help. | Selected early-access users; no firm date for wider access. | The consulted materials do not describe call-specific approval, monitoring, handoff or stopping controls. |
| Meta’s Muse | Outbound calls to U.S. businesses. Public accounts describe navigating customer-service phone trees. | Calling beta prioritizes requesters within Muse’s U.S. rollout; no firm date for wider access. | Meta documents general permissions and activity logs, but does not specify which steps during calls require approval. |
The restaurant example captures the appeal: an assistant could pursue a booking even when there is no online reservation form to fill out. But Instinct’s examples remain advertised capabilities. TechCrunch’s report contains no independent test showing how often either service completes a call successfully.
For Muse, a few public accounts offer a more concrete picture. Messaging Agents’ catalog of Muse use reports archives one user’s account of the assistant navigating JetBlue’s phone tree and calling him back after reaching a person. A separate account from a Meta employee describes Muse navigating Xfinity’s phone tree, encountering a verification text, bringing the user into the live call and displaying a transcript.
Those anecdotes suggest a useful division of work: the assistant handles the route to a representative, while the person joins when needed. They are self-reported experiences, including one from someone employed by the maker, and establish neither reliability nor the default approval sequence.
What permission to call actually covers
Meta’s Muse launch announcement says users can inspect an activity trail and change or revoke access to connected services. Its security explanation describes Sentinel, a separate system that allows, denies or pauses proposed actions for approval. When approval is needed, a dialog presents the action directly to the user.
Permission can cover a single action, a task, a period of time or ongoing access. Meta also says previously allowed or low-risk actions may proceed without interruption. These documents predate the calling expansion: they do not establish whether dialing, accepting a reservation or agreeing to a bill change each requires a fresh decision. General activity logs likewise do not establish that every caller gets a live transcript or a way to take over.
Instinct provides less public detail about the calling workflow. Its general terms tell users to monitor and independently verify actions, warn that action records may be inaccurate and acknowledge that confirmations or safeguards may not prevent errors. Those terms do not explain how Concierge users approve, follow or stop a call. That leaves the interface unclear; it does not prove those controls are absent.
The businesses receiving calls have a separate stake. The consulted materials do not establish what introduction or transcription notice recipients hear. The Meta employee’s Xfinity account says the representative did not know an agent was participating, but it does not reproduce the call’s introduction, so it cannot establish that Muse failed to disclose itself. Meta’s documents also do not specify call-transcript retention or a recipient opt-out.
We see the strongest immediate use in handing off the phone tree and bringing the person back for a consequential choice. The next useful test is whether these assistants can reliably finish that errand while making clear when they need permission to commit the user to something.