Meta flips on productivity, lets its AI chatbot run your calendar

So much for “focusing on entertainment.” Meta is doing a full 180 on its AI strategy, transforming its chatbot from a casual creative tool into a personal assistant that can mine your calendar, plan your meals, and hunt for bargains on Facebook Marketplace. The company announced the update on Monday, calling it a “next step toward personal superintelligence,” and it’s powered by the newly released Muse Spark 1.1 model. This shift directly contradicts what Meta CPO Chris Cox told employees last year, when he drew a hard line against “focusing obsessively on productivity” like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. The competitive pressure clearly became too much to ignore. Now, Meta AI can generate daily summaries based on your schedule, search for restaurants that fit your availability, and even browse Marketplace for furniture that suits a specific renovation budget. The assistant can also handle recurring tasks without re-prompting — things like weekly meal plans or monitoring product restocks. That’s a level of persistent, background utility that moves it closer to what Google has been promising with Gemini. Meta also says its assistant is better at synthesizing information from across the web into reports and presentations, and you can now steer its research in the middle of a response, a feature that feels directly lifted from ChatGPT’s playbook. The update is rolling out today in select markets through the Meta AI app and web, with expansion to WhatsApp and more countries promised in the coming weeks. The question is whether users actually want Meta digging that deep into their calendars. The company has a trust problem that rivals like Apple can exploit, and handing over your daily schedule to the same infrastructure that serves you hyper-targeted ads requires a leap of faith Meta hasn’t exactly earned.