Meta's Muse Tops App Charts, but Habit Formation Is the Real Test

The reception has already moved the stock. Meta shares are up about 20% since the app launched a month ago and recorded their best month in September since 2022. Muse remains the top free app on Apple's iOS store, but the bigger question for the Facebook parent is whether people will keep using it after the initial appeal wears off, as Meta seeks an anchor app in a market where OpenAI and Google have been ahead.

"Muse has an opportunity to be sticky with consumers because it's a task-completer, rather than just a chatbot," Meredith Whalen, chief research officer at IDC, said in an email. Whalen said consumers are already using AI tools for a range of tasks, but it is unclear whether they will hand over the personal data required to build an efficient digital assistant. She called that a particularly large obstacle for Meta, which just agreed to an almost $17 billion settlement with a group of states that alleged the company misrepresented the extent of child mental health harms caused by apps like Facebook and Instagram. "The real question is trust," Whalen said.

Meta is pitching Muse to consumers and small businesses for tasks such as organizing personal emails, searching for shopping deals or seeking out prospective customers. Users can access Muse for free, and the company also sells monthly subscription plans at $20 or $100, depending on tokens, the metric it uses to calculate the computing power agents need to complete tasks. Whalen said offering the service free out of the gate lets Meta understand how and why people use it, adding that "price comes later, once the habit is established."

Developers have found AI agents useful as software engineering tools, but the general public and business leaders are still working out what the technology can do beyond answering questions. "I would say that widely, enterprise-scale AI agent adoption is still page one, chapter one," said Ketan Karkhanis, chief executive of ThoughtSpot, which sells AI agent technologies to businesses. Karkhanis said he has not seen the "killer use cases" that would make apps like Muse more compelling than a "next-gen Alexa" or Siri voice assistant used mainly to check the weather.

Andrew Geller, executive producer of 1stAveMachine, said his media firm builds internal agentic tools for certain production tasks. He described Muse and other consumer-focused AI agents as "quite helpful" in introducing the technology to a broad audience, but hardly life-changing. Geller said he was "early on the OpenClaw train," referring to the open-source harness for managing AI agents that gained traction earlier this year, and found personal use of AI agents fun but "kind of a little banal," especially compared with heavier coding applications.

Other technology firms are trying to commercialize consumer AI agents by first drawing users in for free. Former Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer is using a try-before-you-buy approach at Dazzle, her photo-centric AI agent startup, a tactic she said matters "for those occasional users or those users who are just trying to see what the service can do at the very beginning." Dazzle analyzes users' personal photos to infer details about their lives, such as family members or interests, and can then take actions like reminding someone that a pair of shoes they recently looked up is on sale online.

Mayer said the approach dates to her early years at Google, before the company built its market-leading online advertising platform. "What we're really trying to do is see what use cases are really popping with users, what do they see as really helpful, and that will guide it," she said of Dazzle's first week after launch. She compared the pricing strategy to Uber's evolution from black town cars to lower-priced options for a wider base of riders. "It's a luxury to be able to have these wonderful recommendations and to have this level of convenience," Mayer said, adding that Dazzle is weighing transaction fees and subscriptions. "We want to be running a service where people feel that they're getting value on a relatively continuous basis over time."

At Wajo AI, chief executive Shivani Poddar is also weighing business models for her AI-powered digital assistant startup, which lets people research and book appointments or order gifts for family members.

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