Meta's AI agent Muse takes over social handles long held by the band Muse

The band, which trademarked its name in 1999, used the @muse handle on Instagram and on X for years. Fans noticed this summer that the Instagram username appeared to have changed to @museband. The Independent reported the switch took place in July, while Reddit users appeared to spot it in early June. By the time Meta officially unveiled its Muse agent on Tuesday, the company was using @Muse for the agent on Instagram. The band once used @Muse on X as well and now goes by @museband on that platform too; when that changeover occurred is not clear.

The timing created crossed wires. New York Times reporter Mike Isaac pointed out that Mark Zuckerberg's first posts about the agent appeared to tag the band's account, and early posts from other Meta executives did the same. Isaac called it a "bug" in a post on X, where he wrote, "best bug in twitter history."

Some fans have said they were unhappy to see the band's name attached to an AI feature. The Independent noted that Muse has written songs that are "heavily inspired by fears and anxieties surrounding technology and how it might be used for social oppression."

Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and representatives for the band did not either.

This is not the first time an Instagram handle has changed hands around a major Meta announcement. The company secured the @Meta Instagram handle, previously used by an independent motorcycle magazine of the same name, shortly after it announced in 2021 that it was renaming the company from Facebook to Meta. The magazine never publicly explained how the change came about, but its editor-in-chief wrote at the time that seeing a "corporate Goliath" take on the identity it had used since 2014 felt like a "punch in the gut." The magazine later changed its name. Meta said at the time that it had not made any legal threats to the magazine but did not answer questions about whether it had contacted or paid the publisher, and a spokesperson said only, "We allow people to change their usernames on Instagram."

When Meta launched Threads in 2023, it did not control the @threads handle on Instagram, which was held by a small fashion retailer called American Threads. A month later, Meta gained control of the account. Meta has said little about how such name changes play out. Officially, the company does not allow people to buy, sell or trade Instagram usernames, though sought-after handles are known to change hands, sometimes through unofficial channels.

Similar shifts have occurred on X. The person who controlled @X before Elon Musk took over the company was told by email in 2023 that he was losing the username; he says he was offered merchandise in return. That same year, the person who had used the @music handle since 2007 had the username changed so it could serve as an official X account. More recently, X opened a handle marketplace where users can officially buy inactive usernames.