Meta’s AI Agent for Consumers Has Arrived. Alphabet and Amazon Should Watch Out.

Meta Platforms launched its consumer AI agent on Tuesday. The agent can shop online, schedule appointments, and respond to messages. (Josh Edelson/Bloomberg)

Key Points

• Meta Platforms announced Muse, a personal artificial-intelligence agent designed to automate tasks like online shopping and scheduling.
• Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak said Meta could win a large piece of an estimated $30 trillion consumer AI agent total addressable market.
• Meta shares rose Wednesday morning following the announcement.

It was long rumored, long expected, and it has finally arrived. Meta Platforms on Tuesday announced its personal artificial-intelligence agent, called Muse. Wall Street sees the Facebook parent in pole position to dominate the AI online shopping space.

The agent will automate a variety of tasks for users, including shopping online, planning travel, purchasing tickets, scheduling appointments, managing calendars, and sending emails and messages.

“Meta thinks personal superintelligence will be one of the most transformative technologies of a lifetime,” Meta said in a blog post announcing the new AI tool. “Muse is a first step: an agent that takes on more of the work so people can focus on what matters to them.”

Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak on Wednesday wrote that Meta could “win” a substantial piece of the estimated $30 trillion consumer AI agent total addressable market.

Meta stock advanced 6.35% to $652.44 Wednesday morning after ending Tuesday down 0.5%. Shares have fallen 7% this year as of the closing bell on Tuesday but have risen 7.2% this month.

Wall Street in recent months had started to take notice of how AI will change the way consumers conduct online shopping.

Rosenblatt Securities in August wrote that Alphabet, Amazon.com, and Xometry were best positioned to come out on top when the dust settles. It isn’t surprising that Alphabet and Amazon would be considered key players in the emerging AI shopping landscape since they have amassed proprietary data and conduct high-margin operations to fund AI investment.

In late July, Rothschild & Co Redburn in late July noted that a Meta consumer AI agent could be an existential threat to the likes of Shopify. Now with the launch of Muse, that threat may be here.

Morgan Stanley believes that consumer AI agent tools will become integral to digital advertising, e-commerce, online travel, autonomous driving, restaurant delivery, logistics, and wearable technology. And Nowak argues that Meta currently has the upper hand as it can integrate Muse with Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Whatsapp data.

“This combined with the integration of other monetizable
apps and personalized datasets (including Gmail) could give Meta an edge to create a more personalized agent with new monetizable behaviors. The entry price of the product…free…is also a notable advantage that comes with scale,” the analyst wrote.

But Meta isn’t guaranteed anything in the consumer AI agent space.

“We have seen META launch products before that didn’t live up to expectations (FB Shopping, the Metaverse, MetaAI, etc) and think the market will need signal on adoption and monetizable behavior to re-rate shares…which is what we will focus on from here,” Nowak wrote. He has an Overweight rating and a $775 price target on Meta stock.

So, while Meta might be in pole position, the company needs to keep on eye on its rear-view mirror.

Write to Kit Norton at kit.norton@barrons.com

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