Meta's Muse AI agent hits download milestone

Meta's Muse arrived last month as the first popular AI agent aimed at mainstream users, and its early success in downloads and praise previewed a world where more people lean on digital helpers to get work done and manage daily routines. That first-mover status has won Meta public goodwill and an upward jolt in its stock price.

Still, even as billions of people are plugged into Meta's social networks — Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — users don't depend on Meta in the same way they do Google and Apple. The trust that goes with safeguarding emails, calendars, and wallets hasn't historically been Meta's purview, so more cautious tech users might wait for the first wave of early adopters to find the bugs and iron out the kinks, or hold out for whatever consumer-focused agent the iPhone maker or the Gmail company has in store.

Google and Meta are also the top dogs in digital advertising, accounting for more than half of global ad revenue. One of the crucial ideas behind AI agents is moving away from a screen-phone-app interface, which could reshape how these ad businesses operate.