Meta’s Muse gains popularity in personal AI assistant race

Meta just did something it hasn’t done in a while: surprised people. The company’s new personal AI agent, Muse, racked up over 900,000 downloads in its first week after launching on September 8, climbing to the top of both the iOS App Store and Google Play charts in the US. Within two weeks, install numbers ballooned to somewhere between 2.5 and 2.8 million. Wall Street noticed. Meta’s stock jumped 11% in a single day following the launch, its largest one-day gain since April 2025. What Muse actually does Unlike the chatbot assistants most people are used to, Muse is designed to be proactive. It doesn’t just answer questions. It executes multi-step tasks autonomously: sending emails, booking travel, managing personal goals, and interacting with third-party apps. The agent runs inside what Meta calls the “Muse Secure VM,” a dedicated virtual machine environment designed to keep user data compartmentalized. It plugs into Meta’s own ecosystem, naturally, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, but also connects with external services like Gmail and Spotify. Security features include a “Sentinel” supervisor system and one-time payment cards for transactions. The business model and...