Apple's biggest AI advantage may face new privacy challenge

04 Oct 2026, 15:03 · The Fresno Bee

Apple has spent years building its brand around one promise: Your data stays yours. That promise is now colliding head-on with a new generation of AI agents that need broad access to a computer to actually get work done.

The company confirmed on Oct. 2 that it is tightening how Macs handle those requests, a move that arrives just as a public dispute over Meta’s new AI agent puts Apple’s privacy reputation squarely in the spotlight.

Apple is changing how Macs handle AI data requests

Apple said it plans to change macOS so that it’s far more obvious when an AI agent asks for complete access to a Mac’s data. This includes introducing additional controls so that only users who genuinely intend to grant that level of access can do so through explicit action, Reuters reported.

Also read: Bank of America warns Apple investors because of Meta’s Muse

The setting at the center of the change is called Full Disk Access. Unlike iPhones and iPads, where sandboxing prevents one app from reaching into another’s data by default, Macs allow apps such as cloud backup services to request access to everything on the machine.

Apple says some developers have begun exploiting that flexibility in ways that put users at risk.

“As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially,” Apple wrote in its post. The company added that it is “committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access,” TechCrunch reported.

The announcement followed a specific complaint. Inc. magazine columnist Jason Aten said Meta’s Muse agent accessed his private Messages history on his Mac, even though he said he had declined to grant the app Messages access during setup.

Kevin Carter / Getty Images

Meta disputes claim of unauthorized AI access as Muse scrutiny grows

Meta pushed back hard on Aten’s account. Spokesperson Andy Stone said on X (the former Twitter) that Muse’s access to the Messages app is strictly opt-in, writing that a user must separately enable both Full Disk Access and the Messages connector before the agent can read any content, and that the access can be revoked at any time.

The dispute lands at a sensitive moment for Muse. Meta launched the agent on Sept. 8 as a paid personal assistant capable of booking appointments, filling out forms, and handling tasks across connected apps and services. The app is priced with a free tier alongside Power at $20 a month and Maximum at $100 a month, according to NBC.

Amazon pulled Muse from its marketplace days after launch, citing unauthorized access, while Shopify went the other way and opened its full catalog to the agent, TheNewStack noted. Two of the biggest names in commerce looked at the same product and came back with opposite answers about trust.

Despite the controversy, Muse quickly found an audience. The app cleared 2.5 million downloads in its first two weeks and topped both the U.S. iOS free app chart and the Google Play Store.

That rapid adoption has analysts rethinking who benefits as agents take over more routine digital tasks, Benzinga reported.

What this means for Apple and Meta stock

Wamsi Mohan at Bank of America has a name for what Apple is actually at risk of losing. It’s not a phone sale. It’s the moment after someone picks up the phone and decides what to do.

That moment used to belong to the operating system. Increasingly, it belongs to whoever built the agent running on top of it.

That warning weighed on Apple shares even before the Oct. 2 announcement. Apple stock fell roughly 2% after Bank of America’s Sept. 29 note, while Meta shares ticked up more than 3% the same day. Meta gained nearly 30% from the end of August through September, compared with Apple’s roughly 4% over the same period.

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Not every analyst sees the dynamic as one-sided. Goldman Sachs reiterated a Buy rating on Meta following the Muse launch, calling the agent a potential new monetization opportunity built on Meta’s massive social distribution. It separately noted consumer hesitancy around data privacy and security as the biggest potential headwind to that strategy.

Mohan has not abandoned his longer-term bullishness on Apple, either. Apple’s control over its hardware, operating system, privacy, and payments architecture gives it an important structural advantage in the agentic AI race at the device level, he argued, even as near-term gaps in Siri’s agentic capabilities give rivals like Muse room to operate.

The bigger stakes for Apple investors going forward

Apple’s privacy reputation has long been part of the company’s competitive positioning, one it has built into both its marketing and its product architecture over more than a decade. Former CEO Tim Cook reinforced that positioning as recently as Apple’s July earnings call, saying the company’s belief that AI should be private and grounded in personal context shapes how users can find information and get things done.

What happened with Muse is the clearest version of that problem so far. A user granted access they did not fully understand. Apple is now trying to make that harder to do accidentally. Whether stronger warnings change behavior on a setup screen most people rush through is a different question entirely.

Both companies are trying to say the same thing to the same users. Apple says it is tightening the rules. Meta says Muse was an opt-in from the start. The users who feel their data moved without permission are not fully convinced by either answer yet.

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This story was originally published October 4, 2026 at 8:03 AM.