Meta’s fuzzy Muse AI personal assistant overtook ChatGPT as the top free iOS app in the US after launching earlier this month, surpassing 3.4 million downloads last week.
But whether the agent will be able to hold on to that momentum is anything but guaranteed, considering the sheer amount of changes it requires to its users’ behavior. Tech companies like OpenAI and Meta would love us to hand over mundane tasks like booking a flight or shopping online to their agents — but that may not even be a priority for the average user.
As Axios points out, Muse and similar products like Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s two days-old Dots have a “normal-people problem,” requiring the average user to adjust their private lives to have AI agents solve various problems.
In other words, most people aren’t AI-pilled fanatics looking to hand over their day-to-day responsibilities to AI agents.
Besides, the cute facade of Muse’s mascot, internally known as “Jolly,” elides a far darker side of the flashy trend: by having Meta ask users to give its assistant permission to log in to email accounts, enter credit card information, or trawl through extensive social media records, they’re potentially opening themselves up to a world of hurt.
Case in point, one user already claimed this week that Meta’s Muse AI agent was giving out his physical home address to strangers on Facebook Marketplace.
That’s not to mention Meta’s abysmal track record of safeguarding its customers’ sensitive personal information.
Did we mention that the industry is struggling to control its AI agents, which are repeatedly going rogue and surpassing the original scope of their tasks?
As such, the vast majority could be bristling at the idea of handing over their login information. One recent Thales poll found that only 13 percent of respondents said they would let an agent read their emails. Only seven percent said they would allow the tools to transfer money across bank accounts.
Put simply, tech giants have an enormous amount of convincing to do before the tech could stand a chance of going mainstream.
While there’s always a chance that could eventually change as consumer behavior adapts, the stakes for the AI industry are rising right now. Companies need to exponentially drive up revenues into the trillions of dollars over the next couple of years just to cover their enormous amounts on spending on data centers, let alone stand a chance of turning a profit.
Millions of Muse AI downloads are one thing — but we’ve got a long way to go before AI agents are as transformative as tech companies would like us to believe.
More on AI agents: Man Says Meta’s Muse AI Gave His Home Address Out to Strangers
