Meta's New 'Personal AI Agent' Muse Beats ChatGPT in Downloads

Meta's New 'Personal AI Agent' Muse Beats ChatGPT in Downloads - and Get Blocked by Amazon (cnbc.com) 18 Meta's AI "personal agent" Muse overtook ChatGPT as the #1 iOS free app in the U.S. on Friday, reports CNBC — and it's still showing more downloads as of Monday night. Muse now has over 2.5 million downloads since its debut less than two weeks ago, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower... [Muse] is currently ahead of popular services like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Polymarket and Kashi... It's also ahead of rival AI apps like Anthropic's Claude and SpaceXAI's Grok AI, in addition to the Facebook-parent's own Meta AI app... Meta pitched the app as a way for consumers to manage and direct supercharged digital assistants that can perform a number of tasks across the web, like 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, reports GeekWire. Amazon first tried to get Meta to voluntarily exclude Amazon, but they were unsuccessful: The problem, Amazon says, is that it never agreed to any of it. Meta didn't tell Amazon that Muse would access its store, the agent doesn't identify itself when it browses, and it appears to capture and store customer credentials, which the company 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, the article poitns out, "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, reports CNBC. But 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." Muse now has over 2.5 million downloads since its debut less than two weeks ago, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower... [Muse] is currently ahead of popular services like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Polymarket and Kashi... It's also ahead of rival AI apps like Anthropic's Claude and SpaceXAI's Grok AI, in addition to the Facebook-parent's own Meta AI app... Meta pitched the app as a way for consumers to manage and direct supercharged digital assistants that can perform a number of tasks across the web, like 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, reports GeekWire. Amazon first tried to get Meta to voluntarily exclude Amazon, but they were unsuccessful: The problem, Amazon says, is that it never agreed to any of it. Meta didn't tell Amazon that Muse would access its store, the agent doesn't identify itself when it browses, and it appears to capture and store customer credentials, which the company 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, the article poitns out, "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, reports CNBC. But 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." Weird how a new thing... (Score:3, Insightful) ...Gets more downloads than the thing(s) people already had downloaded. I wonder why that would be. How could a brand new app have more downloads in a short timeframe than an app that has been out for years? The secrets of the universe are so confusing.., Re: Weird how a new thing... (Score:2) Ironic (Score:2) how now its Amazon putting up a fuss about external apps hammering it. When I was back in the trenches, running a site on a dedicated server was a nonstop battle against constant bots originating from AWS. Re: (Score:2) I assure you, that is still the case. Just a few days ago, I had to block a dozen or more /16s from AWS. (And at one time, I blocked the entirety of China for several months, but they seem to have learned to obey the robots.txt.) Re: (Score:1) OMG yes. China, Brazil, Russia, anywhere in Africa, so many iptables /16 blocks DROPped. Re: (Score:2) Browsing sites like Amazon and Ebay is a chore anyway when you're looking for something specific or have a complex weighing of parameters. An AI agent for narrowing down product listings would be a big deal. But these sites neither make their own *nor*, apparently, let you use external ones. Re: (Score:1) So better autofill and better email tabs? (Score:2) Muse TV ad (Score:2) How to monetize AI (Score:3) Re: (Score:2) Will that be enough to recover the data center investments? I don't think so, there are a few zeros missing. But when Anthropic and OpenAI (and some others) go bankrupt, expect all your data and chats to end up on the market. Well of course Amazon doesn't want "AI" helping (Score:2) Then people might be able to find what they want rather than what amazon wants to sell and without 50 pages of a completely identical product one after the other. Re: (Score:2) I have had no trouble finding what I want on Amazon. Either it is much more enshittified in the US or there is some problem between keyboard and chair here. Yes, the website is an obnoxious insult to all ideas of ergonomics, but it still works. Purchase complete! (Score:2) So unlike ChatGPT, Muse, being an "agent", can be given access to your bank account (for viewing?), and can apparently do shopping for you. It seems that it can be given use of your credit card. User: I'm thinking of getting a new car. Muse: Ok... I have sold your current car and have purchased a new one. I have also resigned from your job and applied for a new one with a better salary so that you can afford the repayments on the new car. I have also taken the liberty of sending flowers to the woman you talke Re: (Score:2) "Can be given"? Yes. "Should be given"? Hell, no. Will be interesting to see how long it takes for people to get attacked successfully. Or just lose a ton of money due to malfunctions. Obviously, the LLM pushers will deny all responsibility, as users clearly are "holding it wrong". In other news, I recently got free Claude access via a program for researchers. I noted that the first thing asked was access to all my writings, notes, materials. Obviously, I declined. Stealing stuff is basically the DNA of LLM Will be interesting to see attackers use it (Score:2) Without the consent of the owners, of course. This strikes me as a barn-door sized security problem and nobody has any clue how to effectively secure AI agents at this time.