Meta’s New Muse AI App Tops Charts, Draws Strong Early Reviews

Meta Platforms Inc.’s new artificial intelligence agent, Muse, has quickly risen to the top of mobile app charts, a sign that the social media company is gaining traction in the increasingly crowded market for consumer AI assistants.

Muse is ranked the No. 1 free app on the US Apple Inc. iOS App and Google Play stores as of Monday. The assistant, which is available for people 18 years and older, was downloaded more than 902,000 times in the six days after Meta introduced it on Sept. 8, according to Abe Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower. That’s more than the 773,000 downloads of its predecessor, the Meta AI app, in the same post-launch period, he added.

Muse is also available within Meta-owned WhatsApp, indicating it may have even more users beyond the number of standalone app downloads.

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Muse lets people create customized AI agents, tools that can be sent out to the web to complete digital tasks on a user’s behalf. The key difference between Muse and the older Meta AI is Muse’s ability to respond based on users’ social content like Facebook Marketplace and Instagram, as well as to connect to third-party services like Gmail, Apple and Google Calendars, OpenTable or other websites via a browser.

By contrast, the free Meta AI app, released last April, focuses on image and short-video generation and offers a less personalized experience. Muse is free to use within limits, but a $20 or $100 a month subscription comes with more weekly tokens.

Read More: Meta’s Consumer AI App Has Persistent Flaws Months After Debut

Muse’s early popularity may show that Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of making personalized AI assistants may finally be resonating with the broader consumer, and that its billion-dollar-investments into data centers and AI research could eventually pay off.

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“Meta has a hit on its hands with Muse,” analysts from Evercore ISI wrote in a note on Monday. “It amounts to a very tangible sign of successful product innovation” and is evidence that Meta’s $200 billion AI investments “have not been in vain,” the analysts, led by Mark Mahaney, added.

The user trends suggest “a potentially very dramatic new driver of usage and engagement for Meta” and could bring “substantial new monetization opportunities for Meta in the form of advertising, subscriptions and transaction revenue-share,” the Evercore researchers said.

Shares of Meta jumped as much as 11% on Monday. The stock had gained about 0.9% since the start of the year through Friday’s close.

The early success of Muse has also helped lift the stocks of some of Meta’s key suppliers, particularly makers of microprocessors. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. surged as much as 10% for a gain, that if it holds until the close, will push its market value to above $1 trillion. Intel Corp. rose as much as 15% and Arm Holdings Plc soared 16%.