Can Meta's Muse Overcome the Company's Trust Issues?
Meta's new AI agent, Muse, took center stage at the company's annual Connect event, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that Facebook's parent company plans to push AI features everywhere.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O'Kane, and I discussed how Meta's AI announcements managed to steal the spotlight during a week of new model launches from OpenAI and Anthropic.
With other big AI companies focused on coding and enterprise tools, it was a little surprising to see Meta move in the opposite direction, with a consumer focus and a cute, Tamagotchi-style AI device that Meta insists is for adults only. But as Kirsten noted, this could be playing to Meta's strengths.
Sean tried Muse for himself, and while he was pleased that the agent actually found him some unclaimed money, he described the feature as more "a party-trick type thing" rather than something that will drive ongoing usage. Plus, there's the question of whether users can trust Meta's AI with sensitive information.
"Meta's business is to sell you ads," Sean said. "And yes, they'll make the argument that the more they know about you, the more accurate and interesting the ads will be — wake me up when we get to that fever dream."
Keep reading for a preview of our full conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Kirsten Korosec: So how do you put Muse, this new personal AI agent that's just been released by Meta and is clearly a bet on consumer — how does that fit into what you just described, at least with other frontier AI model companies seeing opportunity and business within enterprise? Because Meta Connect, their big annual event, just happened, and they are all-in on Muse, that is very clear.
Anthony Ha: That was definitely very head-spinning for me, because it certainly feels like what we've been talking about has been this shift towards enterprise — not exclusively, but certainly that's where the money, the attention is going.
Maybe some of that is because of the relative position of these different companies — OpenAI and Anthropic are in the lead in a lot of ways, but also, they're planning to go public either this year, or next year in the case of OpenAI. And so there's this feeling of, "I think we've got to actually make money now." Not to say that they're not making money [already], but because the costs are so high and the valuations are so high, they have to make money on this scale that's essentially unprecedented. And I think they're seeing enterprise as the way to do that.
And I wonder if Meta, for a variety of reasons, sees a different opportunity. There's a part of me that's like, "Wait, did they not get the memo?" But I think more charitably, you could say, "Well, if that's where OpenAI and Anthropic are going, then maybe there is more of an opportunity for Meta to make the more consumer-friendly [version and] continue advancing AI on the consumer side."
This article is based on an episode of the TechCrunch Equity podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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