Muse is a personal AI helper made by Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. You talk to it like you would message a friend, and it can go and do things for you: read and reply to email, check your calendar, compare prices, fill in forms, book a table, or buy something. It launched on September 8, 2026 in the United States, it is free for most people, and it lives in the Muse app, at muse.ai, and inside WhatsApp.
What Muse actually is
Most AI products you have used so far are chatbots. You type a question, they type an answer, and then it is up to you to go do something with it. Muse is built to do the something.
Meta calls it a "personal AI agent." The word agent is the important part. An agent is an AI that can take actions in the real world on your behalf: open a website, log in with your accounts, click through a checkout, send a message, or keep working on a task after you have closed the app. Meta's own description is that Muse "doesn't just answer questions, it actually does the work."
In practice, that means you can say things like:
- "Find the cheapest nonstop to Denver on the 14th and book it with my usual card."
- "Reply to everyone who emailed me about the fundraiser and tell them the date moved to Saturday."
- "Sell my old bike. Take photos from my camera roll, write the listing, and post it."
- "Lower my internet bill."
Muse will make a plan, tell you what it is going to do, ask before anything sensitive like spending money or sending an email, and then get on with it.
How it is different from a chatbot
Three things separate Muse from the Meta AI chatbot you may already have seen inside Instagram or WhatsApp, and from ChatGPT-style assistants.
It has hands. Muse runs on what Meta calls a Muse Secure VM: a dedicated computer in the cloud with its own web browser, set up just for you. That is how it can open pages, fill in forms, and press buttons. A chatbot can only talk about a website. Muse can use one.
It keeps working when you leave. For tasks that take time, Muse keeps going after you close the app. It comes back to you when something changes or when it needs your approval. If you ask it to sell your car for the best price, it can negotiate with buyers over days.
It connects to your accounts. Muse gets useful when you connect apps to it: your email, your calendar, a shopping site, a note-taking tool. Every connection is your choice, you decide how much access it gets (for example, read my email but do not send), and you can disconnect any app whenever you like. This directory exists to help you find apps Muse can connect to and see which ones are working right now.
What it can do today
As of late September 2026, here is what people are actually using Muse for. We keep a longer, living list at What Muse can do.
Everyday admin. Reading and summarising email, drafting replies, managing your calendar, turning a voice note into a to-do list, chasing people who have not responded.
Shopping. Comparing prices across stores, finding a specific product, and checking out. Muse can pay with Link (built by Stripe), which generates a one-time card so your real card details stay hidden, and purchases are covered by Link's purchase protections. Shop Pay and PayPal are being added. Meta has announced retail partners including Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora and Wayfair, and Muse can search the whole Shopify catalog.
Travel. Searching flights and stays, building an itinerary, and booking. Expedia is a launch partner.
Money. Negotiating bills down, finding subscriptions you forgot about, checking medical charges. There are finance and bills connectors built specifically for this.
Selling things. Writing listings, answering buyers, negotiating a price.
Planning bigger goals. If you tell Muse "I want to run a half marathon in March," it can build a plan, put sessions on your calendar, and adjust when your week changes.
Work. Muse connects to GitHub, Notion and Granola, and Meta has said a Mac version will be able to operate any app on your desktop and "run your small business." See our guide on using Muse for a small business.
Coming soon (announced at Meta Connect, September 23, 2026). A video-chat avatar for your Muse, Muse inside Meta's AI glasses with a wake word, its own email address so you can cc it on threads, and the Mac desktop control feature.
What it cannot do yet: some big sites block it. Amazon, for example, prevents Muse from browsing its store, although Muse can still find Amazon product links through search. Our directory marks any app that is blocked so you know before you try.
How it works under the hood
You do not need to understand this to use Muse, but it explains the privacy and safety promises Meta makes.
Every person's Muse runs on its own isolated virtual computer in Meta's cloud. Your data and the credentials for any service you connect are stored there, not shared with other people's agents. Muse itself never sees your passwords or card numbers: anything you enter goes into secure storage that Muse can use but not read.
Sitting next to Muse on that same machine is a second, separate program Meta calls the Sentinel. Nothing Muse does reaches the internet unless the Sentinel lets it through, and it will stop and ask you when needed. That is the mechanism behind "Muse asks before it sends an email or makes a purchase."
Muse keeps a full audit trail of everything it has done and plans to do, which you can open at any time. It remembers things you have told it (your kids' allergies, that you prefer aisle seats), and you can tell it to forget any specific thing. Meta says Muse conversations and VM data are not shared with its ad systems, and you can opt out of your interactions being used to train Meta's models.
Later this year Meta plans a Muse Confidential VM, where the entire machine is encrypted with a key only you hold, so that not even Meta can read it.
The AI model doing the thinking is called Muse Spark, Meta's most capable model. We explain the whole family in Muse Spark, Glimmer, Image, Code and Voice explained.
Where you can use it
- iPhone and Android: the Muse app, from the App Store or Google Play.
- Web: muse.ai in any browser.
- WhatsApp: you can message Muse directly inside WhatsApp, which is how many people use it day to day.
- Mac: a desktop app that can take actions on your computer, downloaded from Meta rather than the Mac App Store.
- Meta AI glasses: announced, arriving "in the coming months."
Muse launched in the US and has since reached Canada. Elsewhere there is a waitlist. Meta describes availability as limited testing that may not have reached every account, so two people in the same country can have different features. Our guide on getting Muse, invite codes and where it works has the details.
What it costs
Muse is free with a weekly usage limit. Mark Zuckerberg put the free allowance at up to 100 million tokens a week. Above that there are two paid plans: Power at $20 a month for 500 million Muse tokens a week, and Maximum at $100 a month for 3 billion a week. Most people never reach the free limit. The full breakdown, including what a token is and how far the free tier goes, is in Meta Muse pricing explained.
If you have not joined yet, an invite code entered within 48 hours of signing up gives you 1 billion bonus tokens, which is roughly ten weeks of the free allowance. Ours is on the Start page.
Muse, Muse Spark, Meta AI: which is which
Meta has used the word Muse for several things in 2026, and search results mix them up constantly. Here is the map.
| Name | What it is | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Muse (the agent) | The personal AI helper this guide is about. The app, muse.ai, WhatsApp. | Regular people |
| Muse Spark | The AI model that powers Muse and Meta AI. Developers can also use it directly through an API. | Muse itself; developers |
| Muse Glimmer | A smaller, open-weight model you can download and run on your own computer. | Developers and hobbyists |
| Muse Image | Meta's image generator, inside Instagram and WhatsApp. This is the one that caused the Instagram privacy backlash in July. | Instagram and WhatsApp users |
| Muse Code | A coding agent that runs in a developer's terminal. | Programmers |
| Meta AI | The chatbot built into Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Answers questions, does not take actions. | Everyone on Meta's apps |
Short version: if it does things for you, it is Muse. If it makes pictures, it is Muse Image. If it only chats, it is Meta AI. We go deeper in Muse vs Meta AI: what's the difference?
Who it is for, and who should wait
Muse is a good fit if you have a steady stream of small chores that eat your time: bookings, bills, emails that need a reply, things to buy, things to sell. The more of your life runs through email, calendar and online accounts, the more it can take off your plate. It is also unusually approachable: there is no prompt engineering to learn, you just say what you want in normal words.
You might want to wait if:
- You are outside the US or Canada. You will be on a waitlist, and an invite code will not skip it.
- You are not comfortable giving a Meta product access to your email or shopping accounts. Muse is genuinely useful only when connected, so if that is a hard no, a chatbot may suit you better. Our privacy guide walks through exactly what it can see and how to limit it.
- You need it for professional coding or heavy document work. Independent comparisons still put ChatGPT and Claude ahead there. See Muse vs ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini vs Grok Bot.
If you are ready to try it, the fastest path is our Start here page, then pick one small task from What Muse can do and let it run.