Meta launched its Muse personal AI agent app Tuesday, offering subscription tiers up to $100 per month, even as the company faces a nearly $17 billion legal settlement and growing public concern over AI privacy and safety.
Meta introduced its Muse personal agent app on Tuesday, asking users to pay up to $100 per month for AI-powered assistance with digital tasks, even as the company navigates a $17 billion legal settlement and mounting public skepticism about AI safety and privacy.
The app, developed under the internal code name Hatch, is powered by the Muse Spark family of foundation models. Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang has been releasing models from that family at an accelerating pace since April. The Muse app lets users delegate tasks such as booking appointments, filling out electronic forms, and monitoring home security camera feeds to AI-powered assistants.
"We designed the app so it feels very approachable and friendly and explainable, and it doesn't feel too complicated," Wang told CNBC in an interview. "Behind the scenes, Muse might be doing very advanced coding workflows, or building sophisticated integrations, or doing quite a lot of heavy lifting while keeping that very sort of simple for the user."
The app is available in a free tier or through monthly subscription plans priced at $20 or $100, depending on usage. A WhatsApp version will also be available, though it will lack certain features present in the main app, including a feed and an ideas tool that recommends AI agent tips.
The launch follows Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's public signals to investors that supercharged digital assistants represent the company's next significant AI bet. During the company's July earnings call, Zuckerberg described "new personal agents that will be the foundation for our next wave of products and revenue lines in the months and years ahead."
Zuckerberg hired Wang last year as part of a $14 billion investment in his startup, Scale AI.
The debut comes at a difficult moment for Meta. The company recently agreed to pay nearly $17 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by a coalition of state attorneys general, who alleged that Meta misrepresented the prevalence of harm on platforms including Facebook and Instagram. Meta still faces a wave of personal injury and school district lawsuits raising similar allegations.
Wang said the app operates within "its own isolated environment" inside Meta's computing infrastructure and "never sees your actual passwords or payment details and asks before doing anything sensitive."
On data use, users must actively opt out of allowing Meta to use their Muse interactions to train the company's AI models. If they do not opt out, David Singleton, Meta's vice president of engineering, said the company will scrub "critical personally identifying information" before using those interactions to improve its models.
Meta is also exploring commerce-based revenue tied to the agent. "We think the commerce business model is potentially really interesting for this product because of how much it enables people to actually find the things that they are excited about and ultimately fulfill a lot of those purchases," Wang said. No concrete plan has been settled on.
To address security concerns, Meta has launched a bug-bounty program inviting third-party researchers to find vulnerabilities in Muse in exchange for financial rewards.
The personal agent joins a broader agentic push across the technology industry, with OpenAI and Google both having introduced similar tools alongside a range of startups. Wang acknowledged the product is still "pretty early in this new era of personal agents," while positioning Muse as more accessible to general consumers than competing offerings.
With Wall Street pressing Meta to demonstrate returns on its AI spending and the company under simultaneous legal and regulatory pressure, how quickly Muse converts free users to paying subscribers — and whether its privacy architecture holds up to outside scrutiny — will be among the clearest indicators of whether the strategy gains traction.
Sara Montes de Oca is the Editor in Chief of TechEchelon. Previously a correspondent and producer in Washington, D.C., covering business, finance, and politics.
More from Sara →Huawei and Xiaomi unveiled new foldable smartphones Monday ahead of Apple's anticipated Wednesday product event, while Huawei simultaneously faces a federal criminal racketeering trial in New York over charges of technology theft and fraud.
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model release drove sharp gains across AI infrastructure stocks Tuesday, with CoreWeave up nearly 15% and a wave of chipmakers, photonics firms, and cloud providers rallying on renewed confidence in AI spending.
Qualcomm has issued Amazon warrants to acquire 25 million shares at $161.26 each — a roughly $4 billion stake — as part of a deal to build customized AI inference chips for AWS, marking a significant step in the chipmaker's push into data center markets dominated by Nvidia.
Written for readers who already know the basics — markets, AI, and the policy decisions that shape both.