meta The Muse AI personal agent tool has been at the top of the app store charts even though it’s only been out for nearly two weeks.
The social media giant’s Muse app is currently ahead of popular services such as: Open AI”ChatGPT, Polymarket, and Kashi on appleAs of Monday, the iOS app store in the U.S. Free Smartphone Programs category. It also outperforms competing AI apps such as: humanIt includes Claude and SpaceXAI’s Grok AI, in addition to Facebook’s parent company’s own Meta AI app.
The Muse app overtook ChatGPT on Friday to become the leading free iOS app in the U.S., with 730,000 downloads in about five days after its Sept. 8 launch, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower.
According to Sensor Tower, Muse’s cumulative downloads exceeded ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok during the same post-launch period. The company noted that apps are released on a decentralized platform between Apple and Google Play, which affects the total.
Meta pitched the app as a way for consumers to manage and direct a powerful digital assistant that can perform a variety of tasks over the web, such as filling out electronic forms and organizing email inboxes. The app leverages Meta’s Muse Spark family of AI models and represents a major push by CEO Mark Zuckerberg into the AI agent market, with the freely available OpenClaw tool helping to popularize it among developers and tech enthusiasts earlier this year.
“I think most of the agent use cases so far haven’t really been for the general public,” Bernstein analyst Stacey Rasgon told CNBC in an interview on “Squawk on the Street” on Monday. “Now that we have Meta’s Muse and other agents, the potential for broader adoption is starting to open up.”
The buzz surrounding Meta was reflected in its stock price, which soared more than 11% on Monday. According to multiple reports, Wells Fargo has raised its price target on the company’s stock to $796.
The Muse app is free to use, but Meta also offers monthly subscriptions for $20 or $100 depending on usage. This is how Meta could potentially make money from AI agents that aren’t centered around the company’s core online advertising business.
But the debut of Muse by Meta comes amid widespread public concern over AI safety and cybersecurity risks that have rocked the tech industry over the past few weeks. Meta also recently agreed to pay about $17 billion in a settlement with a coalition of state attorneys general who sued the company for misrepresenting the harm its apps like Facebook and Instagram caused to children and teens.
It’s unclear how long the Muse app will continue to be a hit, considering other AI services such as OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s Vibes AI video tool have experienced similar booms upon release but have failed to remain huge hits, including contributing to an increase in Meta AI app downloads when first released last September.
“They value security, but I don’t know how much they care about privacy,” Rasgon said, referring to whether the personal data-hungry app Muse will hurt Meta in the long run.
GeekWire reported late Sunday. Amazon had blocked Muse bots from accessing the site, citing privacy and security risks.
“It’s very easy for third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of other companies’ customers to operate openly and respect service providers’ decisions about whether to participate, an Amazon spokesperson told GeekWire in a statement.”
ShopifyHowever, Muse access works with Meta. Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke announced Monday that the e-commerce site is partnering with Muse to enable agent checkout on online stores.
Spotlight: What Meta’s Muse means for AI.
