Key takeaways
- Meta is embedding Muse, its AI agent launched in early September, across devices from smart glasses to Mac computers with new avatar and voice capabilities.
- The company has signed partnerships with retailers including Best Buy, Walmart, and Sephora, positioning Muse as a shopping hub where Meta can take small transaction fees.
- Developers have already submitted over 1,500 applications to build custom connectors for Muse in less than a week, suggesting early platform momentum.
Meta has committed to turning Muse, its personal AI agent that launched in early September, into what the company describes as a superintelligence billions of people will use daily. At this week’s Connect event in Menlo Park, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief AI officer Alexandr Wang revealed a series of expansions designed to embed the agent deeper into users’ work and personal lives across phones, computers, glasses, and retail experiences.
“The centerpiece of our vision for what we’re building is Muse,” Zuckerberg said during the keynote address. “In the coming years, I expect that Muse is going to grow into the personal superintelligence that billions of people around the world are going to use to accomplish their goals and improve their lives.”
Muse Spark, the multimodal AI model powering Muse, currently connects to users’ email, calendars, apps, and services. The announcements at Connect focus on making the agent more visible through customizable avatars, more integrated into everyday devices like smart glasses and personal computers, and more capable of handling business transactions through retail partnerships. Each expansion appears designed to keep users engaged with Muse throughout their day, whether at work, shopping, or exercising.
Avatar and Real-Time Interaction
Video Chat and Personalization
The company introduced Muse Realtime Avatar, a new model that will give the previously unseen agent a digital body and voice. Users will be able to create customized avatars and hold live video conversations with them in real time, asking questions and assigning tasks while seeing responses delivered by a visible character rather than text on a screen.
The feature marks a shift from text-based AI interaction to something more immersive and personal. A demo at Connect showed the avatar responding in real time to user inputs, suggesting a conversational interface designed to feel more like chatting with another person than issuing commands to software. Meta did not announce a specific launch date, only that the feature would arrive in the coming months.
Social and Metaverse Vision
This capability aligns with Meta’s longstanding focus on visual and social experiences. By pairing agents with digital characters, the company appears to be exploring how AI assistants might fit into a more social computing environment, even as broader metaverse initiatives have shifted focus toward more practical applications. The move suggests Meta is hedging its bet on immersive experiences by embedding AI agents into social interfaces first.
Smart Glasses and Voice Activation
Integration with Meta’s smart glasses line represents perhaps the most significant expansion in terms of accessibility. Users will soon be able to interact with Muse by speaking directly to their glasses through a wake word, eliminating the friction of pulling out a phone or sitting at a computer to delegate a task.
The agent will handle voice commands to guide personalized workouts, log meals, schedule appointments, and help purchase products users encounter in their environment. Meta indicated that Muse will work silently in the background on these tasks and alert users when complete, positioning voice interaction as the most natural and frictionless way to use the agent throughout a day.
Like the avatar feature, glasses integration is planned for the coming months without a confirmed launch date. The timing matters because Meta’s smart glasses compete with similar devices from other manufacturers, and adding functional AI agents directly to the glasses could become a competitive differentiator if executed well.
Desktop and Mac Support
Automation Across Applications
Meta had previously signaled that Muse would expand to Mac, and Connect provided substantial new details on how the agent will operate on desktop computers. Similar to agents from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, Muse will be able to automate tasks across any application on a user’s machine, opening possibilities for business automation and productivity work.
“You can have it help you run your small business, or just get work done for you,” Wang explained. “You can walk away from your computer and it keeps working for you on all the jobs you lined up.” This positioning places Muse directly in competition with existing automation tools, but with the added benefit of natural language interaction and integration with the agent’s broader ecosystem.
Email and Background Operation
This capability requires Muse to maintain persistent background operation while handling multiple queued tasks. To support that, Meta announced that Muse will receive its own email address. Users will be able to add Muse to email threads and forward messages to the agent for it to handle independently. Meta said this email functionality will roll out soon without providing a timeline.
The desktop expansion positions Muse as a tool that can operate across a user’s entire digital workspace. By supporting Mac alongside phones and glasses, Meta is broadening Muse’s utility beyond personal assistants into territories where it can handle complex work tasks traditionally assigned to humans.
Commerce and Retail Partnerships
Retail Networks and Catalogs
Muse’s commercial potential emerged as a focal point of the Connect announcements. Meta has locked in partnerships with major payment processors and retail platforms, effectively building shopping infrastructure directly into the agent. Stripe and Shopify partnerships grant Muse access to the entire Shopify catalog, while Shop Pay and PayPal integrations enable purchases.
New retail partners now integrated with Muse include:
- Best Buy
- Gap
- Sephora
- Walmart
- Wayfair
The agent will also connect to Expedia and will soon support Instacart. Productivity tools including GitHub, Granola, and Notion round out the integration set, creating a platform that mixes commerce, logistics, and work tools.
Transaction Model and Revenue
These partnerships indicate how Meta views Muse’s role in the broader ecosystem. Rather than limiting the agent to Meta services alone, the company is building Muse as a hub through which purchases and transactions flow. Each transaction represents a point where Meta could eventually extract fees, creating the revenue model that Zuckerberg outlined.
The breadth of retail integrations suggests Meta is racing to become indispensable to the shopping habits of its users. If Muse becomes the default interface for making purchases, Meta gains leverage over both consumers and merchants to take a cut of those transactions.
Developer Ecosystem
Meta announced that it has opened Muse to third-party developers who want to build custom connectors, and the response velocity exceeded expectations. The company received more than 1,500 applications in less than a week.
“I think this could be a generational opportunity to start building for a new platform as it takes off, and the response so far has been really great,” Wang said. The volume of developer interest suggests that creators see Muse as a foundational platform similar to iOS or Android in their early stages, worth building on before winners emerge.
This ecosystem play could become as important as the features themselves. If developers build services and connectors onto Muse faster than the company can build them internally, the agent becomes embedded across more services and use cases, deepening user dependence and expanding transaction volume.
Monetization Strategy
Meta’s approach to revenue from Muse differs from subscription-based competitor models. Zuckerberg emphasized that Muse will remain free for users through a large allocation of free tokens, removing barriers to adoption that often slow AI product growth.
The company’s revenue model depends on taking small fees from transactions that flow through Muse over time. “We’re standing behind this by making Muse free for a huge number of tokens, with the expectation that over time we will profit by taking a small fee from transactions,” Zuckerberg said.
This strategy prioritizes user scale over immediate monetization. By keeping the agent free and embedding it across devices, services, and retail platforms, Meta is betting that the sheer volume of transactions will eventually generate significant revenue. The approach mirrors strategies from other platforms that grew user bases first and discovered monetization pathways later.
Frequently Asked Questions
When will Muse's new features launch?
The Muse Realtime Avatar feature and smart glasses integration are both planned for the coming months without specific dates. The email functionality will roll out soon, also without a confirmed timeline.
Which retailers can Muse shop from?
Muse integrates with Shopify, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Walmart, Wayfair, Expedia, and will soon support Instacart. It also supports purchases through Stripe and PayPal.
How will Meta make money from Muse?
Meta will offer Muse free to users with a large allocation of free tokens. The company expects to profit by taking small fees from transactions that flow through the agent over time.
