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THE DAILY DOWNLOAD / META / MUSE

Meta’s Muse hit #1 on the App Store. Amazon is not a fan.

Meta's free AI agent shops, books and fills in forms for you. It knocked ChatGPT off the top of the App Store, Amazon started blocking it, and Meta doubled down at Connect.

The TL;DR

  • Muse is Meta's free personal AI agent app. It can book, shop and handle email and calendar tasks for you.
  • It passed ChatGPT as the top free app on Apple's App Store, and Amazon started blocking it from shopping on its store.
  • At Connect on Sept 23, Meta announced a video avatar, a Mac app that can use any app, and smart-glasses support "in the coming months".

Meta's Muse launched in the US on Sept 8 and immediately said "hold my smoothie." It's an AI agent built to actually do things: book, shop, fill in forms and juggle your email and calendar. People were curious enough to push it past ChatGPT to the top of Apple's free app chart. Main character energy.

Then the plot twist. Amazon started blocking Muse, saying "continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use." Translation: Amazon makes serious money when humans browse its site and see its ads, and a robot shopper skips all of that. Call it the first big turf war of the agent era.

Meta was not bothered. At Connect on Sept 23 it announced a real-time video avatar for Muse, a Mac app that lets Muse operate any app on your computer, wake-word support on Meta's smart glasses in the coming months, and partners including Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora, Expedia, Instacart, Shopify, Stripe and PayPal.

The business model: free to start, then Meta plans to take a small fee on transactions. So yes, the agent that shops for you is also how Meta gets paid.

Why you should care

A free agent that can spend money for you is a big deal and a big responsibility. To work well, it needs access to sensitive stuff like payment details. Meta uses safeguards such as one-time card numbers, but read that permissions screen like it's a group chat you weren't supposed to see.

Vibe check

Iconic launch. Trust issues pending.

Sources

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