Meta’s Muse hits 10m downloads as AI agents court shoppers

The latest:

Personal AI agents are scaling faster than the chatbots that preceded them. Meta’s Muse passed 10m app downloads in a little over a month, according to Sensor Tower, against 3.7m for OpenAI’s ChatGPT app over the same stretch after its launch, The Economist reported. The startup Instinct, reachable through iMessage and WhatsApp, is growing users by roughly 10% a day on an invite-only basis.

Details:

• What they do: Instinct’s assistants check users into flights, source sold-out concert tickets and arrange dinners with friends, The Economist reported. Muse offers similar powers via WhatsApp, a web browser, a mobile app, and from later this year Meta’s smart glasses. Muse is currently limited to users in America and Canada.
• The shift: M.G. Siegler, an investor and blogger, said the break from earlier digital assistants is that the new bots work proactively rather than reacting only to explicit requests. Noah Shinn, Instinct’s 24-year-old founder, said his product works the way he believes everyone wants AI to behave.
• Retention: Around half of people who sign up to Instinct keep using it at least once a week after the first month, according to the startup, which has not published figures beyond that point. Muse is retaining users at about the same rate as ChatGPT, The Economist reported.
• The security risk: Agents need calendars and payment details to be more than a glorified chatbot, exposing users to prompt injection — where an attacker hides text in a website’s code to deceive the AI into misbehaving. Some security researchers reckon Muse remains susceptible to malicious instructions.
• The defences: Meta assigns each Muse user a private server to hold their data and run their assistant, and has taught the bot ways to resist prompt injections. Instinct has disclosed less about its cyber-security measures; Shinn said users should always control their data.
• Trust and money: Meta has admitted Muse will make mistakes and has added guardrails to limit the damage. About 40% of Instinct users link a credit card within three weeks. Both firms work with Stripe on a digital wallet that lets users buy without handing over banking details directly.
• Who is open: Shopify is working to make it easier for Instinct and Muse to buy from its vendor network. Meta is also working with Walmart, Instacart and Expedia, according to The Economist. Instinct won over some restaurant-booking platforms by agreeing to stop its agents mass-booking reservations and cancelling all but one.
• Who is closed: Amazon is currently off limits to both agents. The retailer earns a large share of profit from advertising and has little need for extra agent traffic, The Economist reported, and has complained that Meta gave it no advance warning of Muse’s release. Andy Jassy, Amazon’s boss, said previously he is hopeful of a fair deal.
• The money model: Mark Zuckerberg has said Muse will earn its keep from a mix of subscriptions and a cut of the transactions it facilitates. Shinn reckons most online spending will eventually flow through personal agents. Neither company has set out pricing or a revenue-share rate.
• The field: Instinct has raised $1.4bn in its first year, a fraction of Meta’s resources. OpenAI and Google both offer personal agents pitched more at business than consumer use. Airbnb says it plans to launch one next year, and Apple gave Siri a makeover in June that still lacks most autonomous capabilities.

Background:

Silicon Valley has chased a capable digital assistant for years. Apple acquired Siri in 2010; it proved disappointingly limited. ChatGPT’s mobile app arrived about six months after the web version that triggered the current AI investment wave.

Between the lines:

The download numbers are the easy part. The harder test sits in the two constraints already visible: Amazon’s refusal to open its marketplace, and the 40% credit-card attachment rate at three weeks. Zuckerberg’s stated model depends on transaction cuts, which requires merchants to admit agents and users to trust them with payment credentials. Neither is settled, and Amazon’s advertising incentive runs directly against granting access.

What’s next

Watch whether Amazon reaches terms with either firm, Meta’s rollout of Muse on smart glasses later this year, Muse’s expansion beyond America and Canada, and Airbnb’s promised agent launch next year.