Meta’s Muse becomes App Store’s hottest download

Meta’s recently launched Muse personal artificial intelligence (AI) agent app rose to the top of the Apple App Store after it launched earlier this month.

Muse ranked as the top free app in Apple’s U.S. App Store, ranking ahead of another popular AI tool, OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The rise of Muse reflects a shift in how consumers are using AI, with agentic apps that help users with a variety of tasks, as opposed to a chatbot that can respond to a user’s conversational prompts and perform research.

The Muse AI agent debuted in early September and is designed to access a person’s apps across categories like email, calendar, payments, health, shopping and the smart home, the company said after the launch.

META INTRODUCES MUSE, A PERSONAL AI AGENT THAT CAN SEND EMAILS, BOOK TRAVEL

Modeled on the open-source AI agent OpenClaw, Muse can autonomously send emails, book travel on the user’s behalf, sell a car and lower a bill, according to Meta.

The Muse app allows people to choose what apps the AI agent can connect to and revoke access at any time.

Each Muse agent runs on its own virtual machine, a cloud-based emulation of a personal computer, which enables it to keep carrying out requests in the background even when a person is not actively using it.

ZUCKERBERG LAYS OUT VISION TO PUT SUPERINTELLIGENT AI IN EVERYONE’S HANDS

Meta said that users can tell Muse what they need to get done, and it will take action using the Muse Spark model that the company built for real-world agentic work. It can handle tasks such as sending an email or booking travel, as well as bigger projects.

The company said that once a user shares a goal with Muse, it helps them develop a personalized plan and coordinate their time and resources, while advancing the work on its own – opening browsers, filling out forms, and even negotiating on the user’s behalf.

For longer tasks, Muse can continue to work after the app is closed but can come back when something changes or if it needs approval, like before sending an email or making a purchase, Meta said.

ZUCKERBERG SAYS AI SHOULD EMPOWER PEOPLE, NOT REPLACE THEM, IN NEW META VISION

Muse also remembers a user’s preferences, giving it the ability to make suggestions unprompted and take action on details that were only mentioned once.

As an example, Meta said that Muse can turn a recipe reel saved on Instagram into a grocery list, then generate a suggested menu for a dinner party that takes into account their friends’ dietary restrictions from prior gatherings before sending invites.

Syncing the Muse agent with a range of other apps that could contain a person’s data increases the range of capabilities for the new tool, though it also poses safety and reliability risks if Muse misbehaves after being granted access to the user’s personal information.

Meta said that it initially delayed the release of Muse in April to make it more secure, and the additional work allowed it to “cross the threshold” and meet minimum requirements for product safety, security, privacy, model performance and other metrics, according to Vishal Shah, vice president of AI products at Meta.

The company plans to introduce Muse Confidential VM later this year, which will keep a user’s data and communications with Muse in an encrypted format that only the user holds.