The Archive

We seem to be entering into an AI agent renaissance. Meta's new consumer-facing AI agent, Muse, topped the App Store charts soon after its release and has 600,000 daily active users in the US, by an Apptopia estimate. And AI agent platform Instinct, whose eponymous creator is fundraising at a $2.5 billion valuation, has been making the rounds in the tech industry. Under the hood, though, there are some obvious similarities to the platform that started it all: OpenClaw. For the past week or so, some social media users have alleged that Muse is directly built on OpenClaw. The two platforms use ...

The fireman outfit. Dead. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here. Last night, I asked Blorbo - what I named my Muse AI agent - to help me set some health goals. I was underwhelmed. I'd asked for a workout regimen for a sub-30 minute 5K and regaining lost muscle. It generated an okay-ish but kind of mid weekly routine. But then I looked at its face. Based on what it learned about me ...

It’s a big week for Meta. The company just kicked off its big Connect conference on Wednesday, and the new Muse AI agent appears to be an early hit. I’ve been using it — it is surprisingly good. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has obviously been out there taking a victory lap and participating in a lot of interviews about all this. So of course, we asked for him to appear on Decoder. Meta declined my interview request for whatever reason. But luckily Mark just did a big interview with our friend and former colleague Alex Heath on the Sources podcast. So I figure we could just highlight some moments from ...

Meta says the keychain-sized Muse Charm will ship in December.

Meta's handheld AI gadget, called the Muse Charm, will be able to recognize and interact with other nearby Charms when it launches later this year. That's according to a report from Bloomberg, which includes more details about the device that the company teased during its Meta Connect keynote on Wednesday. The Muse Charm houses the company's buzzy Muse AI agent and comes with a built-in 5G modem, meaning you won't need to connect to Wi-Fi to interact with the AI agent, according to Bloomberg. It will come with a two-inch OLED touchscreen, a new operating system, and a fingerprint sensor you c...

Meta announced Muse AR glasses, voice/video capabilities, and Charm AI assistant at Connect 2026.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the company’s annual Connect event in Menlo Park on Wednesday with a keynote that made one thing clear: Meta is going all-in on Muse. It's even coming to Meta's AI glasses.

The tiny hardware device creates another mobile home for its AI agent Muse.

Meta is building a dedicated hardware device for its new Muse AI agent. The product, called Muse Charm, was briefly shown off by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the end of his Meta Connect presentation. It looks almost like a chunky smart watch without the strap - just a big screen, plus a little lanyard for carrying the device around. The Muse Charm has a fingerprint sensor on the top right corner, which you can press to activate and begin speaking to the agent. There appears to be a small camera on the device as well, plus what looks like at least three holes for microphones on the front. Zucke...

Just a couple of weeks after launching Muse, Meta announced that it's "working on" bringing the agent to its smart glasses, including the new glasses it unveiled at Meta Connect. Users will be able to activate Muse from their glasses by saying its name and ask it to handle tasks like guiding a workout, logging meals, or helping them shop for products they're looking at. Muse is just one of several major updates coming to Meta's glasses. They're also getting some new accessibility features, like a Hearing Enhancement feature Meta says is "FDA-cleared software for adults with perceived mild to ...

Meta is quickly iterating on its new Muse AI agent, announcing a bunch of updates today that make the bot more capable and able to chat with you in more ways. Muse agents are getting their own email addresses that they can use for accomplishing tasks. You'll also be able to communicate with your Muse agent over the new email addresses, too. In addition, the recently launched Muse Mac app will be getting the ability to use your computer. Meta is also going to give you another way to chat with its popular AI agent: video calls. Since its recent launch, the primary way to talk with Muse was thro...

It's time once again for Meta's annual September product launch event, and The Verge is on the ground in Menlo Park to cover the show live. Meta says that today's keynote by Mark Zuckerberg will be about how "Meta is building a future for everyone" - something he wrote at length about in a recent essay about AI, smart glasses, and more. That means we can expect more news from Zuckerberg and his team on those topics; perhaps we'll hear more about Meta's recently launched Muse AI agent and new glasses hardware. Whatever Zuckerberg and Meta have to say about smart glasses will be particularly no...

Stratechery analysis of Meta's Muse platform positioning vs Amazon, Walmart, and Expedia; questions Google's competitive response.

Meta says Muse was built from scratch, but acknowledges the AI assistant was "heavily inspired" by OpenClaw — down to some of its workspace filenames and content.

The zero-day exploit required local access to the user’s device, but gave potential attackers access to Muse accounts. | Image: The Verge Meta has issued a patch for its Muse macOS app following the discovery of a zero-day vulnerability that could allow someone to take control of the AI agent. The bug found by security researcher Patrick Wardle utilized an undocumented Muse setting that enabled potential attackers running local code to redirect transcription processing from Meta's servers to their own endpoint, Ars Technica reports, giving the attacker access to the Muse account. Several desi...

Commentary on interdisciplinary AI collaboration lessons from galleries/libraries/archives/museums (GLAMs) for research funding and trans-disciplinary approaches.

Amazon blocks Muse acquisition; analysis argues Amazon's physical infrastructure creates AI competitive advantage.

A simple ClickFix attack is only one way to completely hijack the new agent.

Meta’s new AI agent Muse has racked up more downloads and daily active users in the U.S. and Canada than ChatGPT did over the same period after its mobile debut, according to new estimates from Appfigures.

Muse isn't welcome as a shopper anymore.

Meta's Muse AI agent has been blocked from shopping Amazon on behalf of its users, GeekWire reports. A popup message started appearing on Sunday for Muse users saying that "continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed." According to GeekWire, Meta didn't notify Amazon that Muse would access its store. Amazon also expressed privacy and security concerns over Muse failing to identify itself when it browses, and seemingly capturing customer credentials. "We think it's fairly straightforward that third-party applications that...

Meta's Muse is apparently an effective AI assistant, but one that's a little creepy. Part of that is because of its new Mac app, which can access Messages, Calendar, and Notes. But for all its smarts, Muse doesn't actually know how to describe itself. Jason Aten, a contributing editor at Inc Magazine, posted on Threads screenshots of an interaction he had with Muse in which the assistant asks him some questions about a conversation he was having in Messages. The problem is that Aten says he didn't give Muse access to his messages. When asked how it knew about the contents of his messages, Mus...

Muse is now available on the Mac, where it can work with your files and apps to take action on your behalf.

People can use these assistants to make restaurant reservations and cancel subscriptions

Snap is introducing "Specs Intelligence," a new AI assistant that can connect other digital accounts to help you with things like work tasks and keeping track of travel information. It seems similar to AI assistants like Meta's Muse and Gemini's Spark, though Snap is pitching Specs Intelligence as an "anticipatory AI service" that "helps you manage what needs attention today, so you can make progress toward your longer-term goals." Like with other AI assistants, you can also chat with it. Specs Intelligence is being launched alongside Specs, Snap's first consumer pair of augmented reality gla...

MUSE benchmark evaluates vision-language models on multimodal artistic and cultural understanding for AI-assisted language education.

Shortly after launching its new do-everything AI assistant Muse, Meta's launching subscription bundles that pair its standalone app subscriptions with extra AI usage. Some of the new Meta One bundles were in testing earlier this year, but are now available globally starting today, with several tiers for individual users, creators, and businesses. Meta says the "core experience" on its apps and Meta AI will still be free, and users can still get its subscriptions for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp without a bundle. It also says it plans to expand the bundles to include "Edits, AI glasses, a...

Meta's newest app Muse is off to a slower start than the company's other apps, like Meta AI or Threads.

I turned my Muse assistant into a purple cat. | Screenshot: The Verge Meta has launched its new Muse assistant, marking the company's first real foray into AI-powered productivity tools. The company says its AI agent can "take the busywork off your plate" by helping you with online shopping, emails, trip-planning, and more. I decided to try out the new tool and see how well it performed - especially from a company that previously prioritized entertainment over productivity. Though the AI assistant generally worked as I expected it to, the unnerving amount of information it autonomously gleane...

OpenAI advances mathematical reasoning; Meta launches Muse personal agent with practical deployment implications.