Meta’s Muse personal agent has surged to the top of app store rankings, giving the Facebook parent an early victory in its push into artificial intelligence. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called Muse the “centerpiece” of the company’s AI strategy.
Investors have embraced the initial momentum. Meta shares are up about 20% since the app launched a month ago, while the stock posted its best September since 2022.
Muse remains the top free app in Apple’s iOS store, but download leadership is only the opening test. Meta must persuade users to keep returning after the novelty fades and turn the personal agent into an anchor application.
That challenge carries added weight because Meta has trailed OpenAI and Google in the intensely competitive AI market. “Muse has an opportunity to be sticky with consumers because it’s a task-completer, rather than just a chatbot,” Meredith Whalen, chief research officer at IDC, said in an email.
Whalen said consumers already use AI tools for numerous tasks, but their willingness to provide the personal data needed for an effective digital assistant remains unclear. She later described trust as the central question facing Meta.
The concern is particularly significant after Meta agreed to an almost $17 billion settlement with states that alleged the company misrepresented the extent of child mental health harms caused by Facebook, Instagram and other applications.
Meta is marketing Muse to consumers and small businesses. Suggested uses include organizing personal emails, locating shopping deals and finding prospective customers.
Users can access Muse for free, while Meta also offers monthly subscription plans costing $20 or $100. Pricing depends on tokens, the measurement Meta uses to calculate the computing power AI agents require to complete tasks.
The free offering allows Meta to observe how people use Muse before pressing harder on monetization. As Whalen put it, “Price comes later, once the habit is established.”
Image Credit: AI Generated, ChatGPTSoftware engineers have found AI agents useful for coding, but broader adoption remains at an early stage among consumers and business leaders. Many are still trying to understand what more powerful digital assistants can offer beyond question and answer services.
“I would say that widely, enterprise-scale AI agent adoption is still page one, chapter one,” said Ketan Karkhanis, CEO of ThoughtSpot, which sells AI agent technologies to businesses. Karkhanis said he has not seen the “killer use cases” that would move Muse beyond a “next-gen Alexa” or Siri used for simple requests such as checking the weather.
Andrew Geller, executive producer of 1stAveMachine, said his media firm builds internal agent tools for certain production work. He considers Muse and similar consumer products “quite helpful” for introducing the public to the technology, but not transformative.
Geller said he was “early on the OpenClaw train,” referring to an open source harness for managing AI agents. Personal uses can be entertaining, he said, but also “kind of a little banal” compared with more demanding coding applications.
Other technology companies are also using free access to attract consumers before settling on a business model. Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has adopted that approach at Dazzle, her new photo focused AI agent startup.
Dazzle analyzes personal photos to learn about users’ family members and interests. It can then perform tasks such as notifying someone when a pair of shoes they recently viewed goes on sale online.
Mayer said the company is watching which uses prove most valuable during its first week after launch. She compared the strategy with Uber, which began with black town cars before adding lower priced choices for a broader group of customers.
Dazzle is considering subscriptions and transaction fees. Wajo AI CEO Shivani Poddar is likewise weighing business models for a digital assistant that helps users research and book appointments or order gifts for family members.
The stakes are greater for Meta after its massive spending campaign last year to recruit talent and build an AI business capable of competing with OpenAI and Anthropic. Zuckerberg also wants to diversify beyond online advertising, which still provides almost all of Meta’s revenue.
Meta’s advertising operation gives the company room to offer Muse freely while waiting for consumer behavior to develop. “Whoever can subsidize users and wait has the advantage,” Whalen said. “And Meta’s ad business can pay for a lot of waiting.”