Meta's New 'Personal AI Agent' Muse Beats ChatGPT in Downloads - and Get Blocked by Amazon (cnbc.com)
- Reference: 0185735462
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/09/22/0116233/metas-new-personal-ai-agent-muse-beats-chatgpt-in-downloads---and-get-blocked-by-amazon
- Source link: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/21/meta-muse-personal-ai-agent-downloads.html
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, [3]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, [4]suing Perplexity over its Comet browser and moving to block shopping agents [5]from Google and [6]OpenAI . [Amazon won a [7]preliminary injunction against Perplexity in March, the article poitns out, "then [8]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 [9]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, [10]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 [11]allow agentic checkout in its online stores."
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/charts
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/21/meta-muse-personal-ai-agent-downloads.html
[3] https://www.geekwire.com/2026/amazon-blocks-metas-muse-ai-assistant-in-new-standoff-over-agentic-shopping/
[4] https://www.retaildive.com/news/amazon-sues-perplexity-ai-shopping-agents/804871/
[5] https://www.tipranks.com/news/amazon-amzn-blocks-googles-ai-shopping-agents-from-its-e-commerce-platform
[6] https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/chatgpt/amazon-blocks-chatgpts-new-shopping-agent-what-the-fallout-could-mean-for-you
[7] https://www.geekwire.com/2026/judge-blocks-perplexitys-ai-bot-from-shopping-on-amazon-in-early-test-of-agentic-commerce/
[8] https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/08/04/26-1444.pdf
[9] https://www.courthousenews.com/no-9th-circuit-rehearing-in-amazon-perplexity-case/
[10] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/21/meta-muse-personal-ai-agent-downloads.html
[11] https://x.com/tobi/status/2102090718546198790
Ironic (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
Absolutely, anyone running significant web services can tell you that the past few years has been, and still is, dominated by distributed botnets of bandwidth saturating, misidentifying, robots.txt ignoring insatiable agents eager to slurp as much data as possible to feed the bottomless AI maw. There's more than a little schaudenfreude that Amazon of all companies should be complaining of this. They can go fornicate themselves.
So better autofill and better email tabs? (Score:2)
Well no of course not, I bet it's some crap that stretches its goals way beyond its competency and then people are going to be wondering why their doctor's appointments aren't for what they asked for and their taxes aren't paid. But better and generic autofill and better email tab sorting does sound like something I'd actually want, can a competent coder with the time get on those things?
Muse TV ad (Score:2)
Muse has an ad on streaming TV now. The production values and creepiness seem to be inspired by the Miele kitchen equipment "I like German screws" ad. The ad was very effective: at reinforcing my impression of Meta.
How to monetize AI (Score:3)
Since people in general will not pay for AI, and its use doesn't seem to financially benefit most organizations (at least at current prices and capabilities), the monetization options so far appear to be coding/hacking, ads, user data collection, and tracking? Likely selling collected data to governments, marketing, and other leaches? Will that be enough to recover the data center investments?
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Coding, primarily. That's the majority of the text-generation token burn, and strong majority of paying users. Free users asking questions about their daily lives make up a lot of people but only quite small amounts of tokens per user per day, and generally on tiny models. Some users like mathematicians may burn through a lot of tokens on their work, but there's just not enough of them to matter in the overall picture.
Margins at Anthropic and OpenAI are an impressive 40% (and also sustainable at the open m
Re: (Score:2)
[1]Posting a profit on AOI is very different from posting a profit on net income, otherwise known as the "bottom line," under which Anthropic remains billions of dollars in the red. [futurism.com]
[1] https://futurism.com/future-society/anthropic-claude-profit-ai-safety-development-finances
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.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with the GP. You must be looking for much more specific, easy to search and quantify things. I rarely if ever shop there anymore (don't want to support Bezos, and their shipping to Iceland is outrageous (where available at all), even from the European Amazon stores), but like, if I wanted to buy grow lights, I would have to spend hours wading through ads one by one and building up a spreadsheet because you simply can't query on the parameters that matter. And they don't have an AI agent you can ou
Re: Well of course Amazon doesn't want "AI" helpin (Score:2)
People used to have to go to several completely different stores and sift through all the aspects of every option. Now you are saying it's too hard to sit on your couch, select each option, and read them?
Re: (Score:2)
He's saying the site is flooded with garbage from third party sellers.
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If I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to deal with the returns.
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:1)
This *is* the AI we actually want :)
Re: (Score:2)
[1]Remind me of... [xkcd.com]
[1] https://xkcd.com/416/
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.
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)
Seriously, how is this news? BREAKING: New ikea chairs are outselling chairs made five years ago
Re: (Score:1)
You don't have to be so subtle, everything is botted to oblivion. In recent suply-chain attack, a fake version of mathjs on got 6 million downloads in 2 days - without any real package that depended on it. And as soon as ad networks allowed to pay for number of installs people started to work on gaming those numbers.