Meta's Muse Tops iOS Downloads as Amazon Blocks the AI Agent

Muse overtook ChatGPT on Friday, CNBC reported. Analytics firm Sensor Tower said the app has more than 2.5 million downloads since launch. Muse is currently ahead of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Polymarket and Kashi, as well as rival AI apps including Anthropic's Claude and SpaceXAI's Grok AI, and Meta's own Meta AI app. Meta pitched Muse as a way for consumers to manage and direct supercharged digital assistants that can perform tasks across the web, such as filling out electronic forms and organizing email inboxes.

"I think up to this point most of the agentic use cases have not really been for normal people," Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told CNBC in a "Squawk on the Street" interview on Monday. "Now you've got Meta's Muse and other agents out there that are starting to maybe get more potential for more broad-based adoption." The buzz around Meta was also reflected in the stock, which surged more than 11% on Monday.

Amazon is already blocking Muse, GeekWire reported. Amazon first tried to get Meta to voluntarily exclude Amazon, but it was unsuccessful. Amazon says it never agreed to any of it: Meta did not tell Amazon that Muse would access its store, the agent does not identify itself when it browses, and it appears to capture and store customer credentials, which Amazon says could create privacy and security risks. As of Sunday night, people trying to use Muse to shop on Amazon were seeing the popup, "Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed..."

Amazon has spent the past year trying to keep outside agents off its site, suing Perplexity over its Comet browser and moving to block shopping agents from Google and OpenAI. Amazon won a preliminary injunction against Perplexity in March, then lost it on Aug. 4, when the Ninth Circuit ruled that the user — not the AI company — was the one accessing Amazon's computers under federal anti-hacking law. The court denied Amazon's petition for rehearing on Sept. 10. On Sunday night, Amazon said it is in direct conversation with Meta about the issue. Asked whether it would consider taking legal action, the company declined to comment.

The business stakes are high for Amazon. In addition to operating its flagship e-commerce site, Amazon generated more than $68 billion in ad revenue last year, a business that depends on people browsing its pages and seeing sponsored products. Muse also appears to scrape account data, CNBC reported.

Shopify, however, is working with Meta on Muse access. Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke announced Monday that the e-commerce site was partnering with Muse to allow agentic checkout in its online stores.