Zuckerberg unveils Muse Wonder, claims parity with OpenAI, Anthropic

Meta has spent years trying to position itself among the leaders in artificial intelligence, but by its own admission it lagged dramatically behind many rivals and had failed to develop a model seen as being at the frontier. That gap is the backdrop to Zuckerberg's announcement of Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, which Meta says catch up with the leading AI companies in system performance.

The company's approach has differed from rivals in a specific way: a focus on AI systems intended to help people with their lives, providing personal information and doing tasks on their behalf. The new models extend that with capabilities for long tasks over many days, "active memory" for retaining context over time, and better focus on goals. Meta also emphasized safety measures, such as resisting adversarial instructions and checking before important actions, likely aimed at addressing concerns about overly focused autonomous systems.

The near-term signal is that Meta plans to use the system to power more of the Muse agent, which is free, while using the new models is notably expensive compared with Meta's other systems. The work comes from Meta's Superintelligence Labs division, which released the Meta Muse agent last month — a sign that the group's recent strides are now feeding into products.