Ask a chatbot to sell your car and it will write you an advert. Meta's new app is built to go and sell the car. Muse, which Meta put into the American and Canadian app stores on 8 September, takes a goal rather than a question: tell it what needs to happen and it opens a browser, fills in forms, negotiates on your behalf and pays with a one-time card that keeps your real details out of the shop.
What makes it an agent rather than an assistant is that it does not stop when you do. Muse keeps working after the app is closed and comes back when something changes or when it needs a decision, such as before it sends an email or spends money. It runs on a virtual machine of its own, with a separate program called Sentinel on the same machine, kept apart at system level, approving anything that leaves for the internet. Meta says the agent never sees the passwords or payment methods it uses. You reach it in its own app, at muse.ai, or inside WhatsApp.
The download numbers, and who is counting them
Meta has published nothing. Every adoption figure in circulation comes from a measurement firm estimating from the outside, and the three doing it disagree. Apptopia, comparing iPhones in the US and Canada across each app's first 12 days, has Muse ahead of where ChatGPT was, at 1.8 million downloads to 1.3 million. Sensor Tower, using a 13-day window, has ChatGPT ahead on 3.1 million. Appfigures counted 1.1 million devices through the Friday.
The chart position is not disputed. Muse displaced ChatGPT at the top of the free iPhone chart in the United States over the weekend of 18 to 20 September, with Google Play following. On Apptopia's reading it also had 642,000 people using it a day in the US, against 231,000 for ChatGPT at the same stage.
Curiosity is not usage
Downloads are the one number Meta can manufacture. It controls what Appfigures calls an effectively infinite ad network, and it has done this before: Threads passed 500 million users on the back of promotion inside Instagram and Facebook. Over 95% of Muse's users are Facebook users too.
Money is the better test, and it is early. Appfigures estimates Muse earned about $27,000 after fees in its first 11 days, against $175,000 for Grok Bot over the same window. The app is free for most things, with subscriptions at $20 and $100 a month. Sora and Meta's own Vibes both launched into a crowd and then thinned out.
The other open question is where the agent gets to go. Amazon has blocked Muse from its shopping site, arguing that software buying on a customer's behalf should operate openly and respect a service provider's decision about taking part. Shopify's Tobias Lütke announced a partnership the same week that lets Muse check out in its stores. Each site it tries to shop at decides for itself.
