Meta’s Muse hits 10m downloads as AI agents chase Amazon access

The latest:

Personal AI agents are converting hype into usage faster than the chatbots that preceded them. Meta’s Muse passed 10m downloads in a little over a month, according to Sensor Tower, against 3.7m for OpenAI’s ChatGPT app over a comparable stretch after its launch. The startup Instinct, reachable through iMessage and WhatsApp, is growing roughly 10% a day despite an invite-only door policy.

Details:

• The products: Instinct’s assistants book flight check-ins, source sold-out concert tickets and arrange dinners, reached through Apple’s iMessage or Meta’s WhatsApp. Muse works via WhatsApp, a web browser, a mobile app, and from later this year Meta’s smart glasses. Muse is available only in America and Canada.
• The shift: Investor and blogger M.G. Siegler says the break from earlier assistants is that the new bots act proactively rather than only responding to explicit requests. Instinct founder Noah Shinn, 24, said the service works the way he believes everyone wants AI to behave.
• Retention: Around half of Instinct sign-ups keep using it at least weekly after the first month, according to the startup. Muse retains users at roughly the same rate as ChatGPT. Instructions to Instinct’s agents are written as short texts, and the agents reply with progress updates.
• The security risk: Agents need calendars and payment credentials to be more than chatbots. Some in the industry warn of prompt injection, where an attacker hides text in a website’s code to trick an AI into misbehaving. Meta assigns each Muse user a private server and has trained the bot to resist such attacks.
• Unresolved: Some security researchers reckon Muse remains susceptible to malicious instructions, and Meta has admitted it will make mistakes while adding guardrails. Instinct has disclosed less about its cyber-security; Shinn says users should always control their data.
• Payment trust: About 40% of Instinct users link a credit card within three weeks. Both companies work with the payments firm Stripe on a digital wallet that lets users buy without handing over banking details directly, which may ease hesitancy about handing an agent a card.
• Who is cooperating: Shopify is working to let Instinct and Muse buy from its vendor network. Meta is also working with Walmart, the grocery-delivery service Instacart and the travel site Expedia. Instinct won over some restaurant-booking platforms by agreeing not to mass-book reservations and cancel all but one.
• Who is not: Amazon is currently off limits to both agents. It earns a sizeable share of profit from advertising and has little need for extra agent-driven traffic. Amazon has also complained that Meta gave it no advance notice of Muse’s release. Chief executive Andy Jassy has said he is hopeful a fair deal can be reached.
• The business model: Mark Zuckerberg has said Muse will earn money through a mix of subscriptions and a cut of transactions it facilitates. Shinn reckons most online spending will eventually flow through personal agents. Neither company has set out pricing terms for business partners.
• The field: Instinct has raised $1.4bn in its first year, far less than Meta can deploy. OpenAI and Google both offer agents pitched more at business than consumer use. Airbnb says it plans to launch one next year. Apple gave Siri a makeover in June, but it lacks the newer agents’ autonomy.

Background:

Silicon Valley has chased a capable digital assistant for over a decade. Apple bought Siri in 2010; the result underwhelmed. Fictional versions such as J.A.R.V.I.S. in the Iron Man films set expectations the technology could not meet until the current AI investment wave.

Between the lines:

Amazon’s refusal is the clearest test of whether agent commerce becomes a business. Zuckerberg’s model depends on a cut of transactions, and Shinn expects most online spending to route through agents — both assume merchant access that Amazon, profitable from the ads agents would bypass, has no incentive to grant. Instinct’s concession to booking platforms shows the price of entry: builders surrender capability to win partners.

What’s next

Watch whether Amazon opens its marketplace to either agent, Meta’s smart-glasses rollout of Muse later this year, Airbnb’s promised agent launch next year, and whether OpenAI and Google redirect their agents toward consumers.