The Pulse
Instinct and Meta’s Muse Add AI-Powered Phone Calls
Consumer AI agents Instinct and Meta’s Muse now place calls to businesses on behalf of users. The features target restaurant bookings, dentist cancellation lists, cable-billing disputes and other tasks that still require a phone conversatio
AI.info Team ·
Instinct and Meta’s Muse are moving consumer AI agents beyond web forms and messaging by giving them a more old-fashioned task: making phone calls. Both services announced outbound calling features on September 16, putting restaurant reservations, customer-service disputes and appointment requests within reach of an automated assistant.
The releases narrow one of the clearest functional gaps between the new generation of consumer agents. Instinct founder Noah Shinn described the company’s feature as “Instinct Concierge,” while Meta expanded a beta that lets Muse call businesses in the United States. TechCrunch reported the announcements on September 17.
Instinct Concierge Takes on the Calls Users Avoid
Instinct’s calling tool is designed for situations that do not fit neatly into an online checkout or booking form. Shinn wrote that “Your Instinct can now handle phone calls,” presenting Concierge as a service for booking restaurants without online reservations, joining a dentist’s cancellation list and resolving problems with a cable bill.
The feature is entering early access for some users, with a wider rollout planned. Instinct has also added email addresses that let its agents handle account registration and management, and it recently enabled assistants to contact other users’ assistants when those users belong to a trusted network.
Those additions show how Instinct is positioning itself: not simply as a chatbot that answers questions, but as an intermediary that can operate across communication channels and complete administrative tasks. Phone calls are especially valuable for businesses that still rely on staff, hold music and spoken verification rather than public APIs.
Meta Opens Muse Calls to U.S. Businesses
Meta’s Muse is taking a similar route. The company has expanded a beta that allows outbound calls to U.S. businesses, initially prioritizing users who had already asked Muse for the capability. Ryan Fox, who announced the update, said phone calling was among the product’s most requested features.
Meta introduced Muse on September 8 as a personal agent that can open a browser, fill out forms, book travel, send email and continue working after the user closes the app. The service runs inside a dedicated cloud virtual machine, while a separate system called Sentinel controls network access and requests approval for sensitive actions.
Meta says Muse can ask for permission before actions such as sending an email or making a purchase. Its published technical design says Sentinel acts as the permission authority for connector actions and network traffic, while credentials remain outside the agent’s direct view. The phone-call rollout adds another category of external action to that system.
Phone Calls Remove a Persistent Barrier
Online services have made many routine tasks searchable and programmable, but phone-based businesses remain difficult for software to handle. A restaurant may accept reservations only by telephone. A medical office may maintain a cancellation list manually. A cable provider may require a customer to explain a billing problem to a representative.
Agents that can make those calls turn conversational software into a layer between consumers and businesses. Users can describe the outcome they want, while the agent handles the waiting, repetition and scripted exchanges that make many calls unpleasant or time-consuming.
The approach also creates new points of failure. Agents must identify themselves accurately, interpret ambiguous answers, handle transfers and know when to stop rather than improvise. A mistaken booking or an incorrectly disputed charge could cause more trouble than the original task.
Instinct and Muse Close the Feature Gap
Instinct and Muse are competing in a crowded group of text-based assistants that includes Wajo, Town and Ollie. Several rivals had promoted phone calling as an advantage over Instinct, but the new releases bring the two most visible consumer agents closer together on that feature.
Instinct raised $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation in August, according to TechCrunch, and is reportedly discussing a possible $1 billion round at a $10 billion valuation. The company’s quick product releases have attracted attention from investors betting that consumers will use agents across email, messaging, browsers and phone networks.
Muse has shown early consumer traction of its own. Sensor Tower data cited by TechCrunch put Muse at more than 730,000 U.S. downloads in its first five days, compared with 707,000 downloads for the Meta AI app during the same period. Muse also reached the No. 2 position in U.S. app charts at one point.
Trust Will Be Tested on the Line
Phone calls make an agent’s behavior easier to observe than a hidden browser session, but they also raise the stakes. A user may tolerate an awkward generated email; a call that misrepresents a person’s request, discloses private information or accepts an unwanted charge is harder to undo.
Meta’s Muse design emphasizes approval controls, audit trails and isolated credentials, while Instinct is presenting Concierge as a high-touch service rather than a general-purpose autonomous operator. Neither company’s announcement establishes how often the agents succeed on live calls, how they handle disclosure to the recipient or which categories of businesses they can contact.
For now, the practical test is simple: whether users trust an agent to make the call they would otherwise postpone. Instinct’s Concierge is in early access, and Muse’s outbound calling remains a beta for selected users asking to try it.