Meta’s Muse AI Agent Surges, but OpenClaw Similarities Raise Questions

Meta’s personal AI agent Muse drew more than 500,000 users in the week after its September 8 launch, including more than 250,000 daily active users. The app is available in the US as a standalone app and through WhatsApp, and it reached number one in Apple’s App Store with more than 31,000 ratings. Users entered more than two million prompts, according to The Information as cited by The Decoder.

Muse is designed to automate everyday tasks such as research, booking trips, finding deals, tracking expenses, and resolving scheduling conflicts. That positioning puts it in the growing category of personal AI agents that aim to act across apps and services on a user’s behalf. The key practical question is whether people will trust these agents with access to private accounts, personal data, and sensitive information.

Meta has acknowledged that Muse is “heavily inspired” by the open-source project OpenClaw, while also saying the product was “built from scratch.” Users noticed that Muse uses some of the same file names as OpenClaw, with nearly identical contents, including a SOUL.md file that defines an AI agent’s personality, communication style, and behavior rules. Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta Superintelligence Labs and former GitHub CEO, said the team thought OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger got those elements “exactly right.”

Strong launch numbers show clear early demand, but they do not guarantee that Muse will remain widely used. The Decoder notes that OpenAI has discussed building its own personal AI assistant in response to Muse, according to The Information. For users, the takeaway is to watch not only app-store rankings, but also how clearly AI agents explain data access, account permissions, and task execution.