At a glance
| What it is | A personal AI agent that does tasks for you, not just answers |
|---|---|
| Made by | Meta |
| Launched | September 8, 2026, in the US |
| Runs on | Muse Spark, on its own computer in Meta’s cloud |
| Talk to it in | The Muse app (iPhone, Android), muse.ai and WhatsApp |
| Pays with | Link by Stripe, using one-time card numbers |
| Price | Free to start; Power $20 a month; Maximum $100 a month |
What Muse is
Meta launched Muse on September 8, 2026, and calls it a personal AI agent: in its words, it “doesn’t just answer questions, it actually does the work.” You talk to it the way you’d message a person, in the Muse app or in a WhatsApp chat. Give it something bigger, like planning a move, and it builds a plan, works through it, and keeps going after you close the app, coming back when something changes or when it needs a yes from you.
It runs on Muse Spark, which Meta describes as its most capable model so far, and it remembers what you tell it. Mention a friend’s allergy once and Muse can work it into a dinner party menu weeks later. You can tell it to forget things, too.
What you can ask it to do
Meta’s own examples are deliberately ordinary:
- Send emails, fill in forms and book travel
- Lower a bill, or help sell a car for more money
- Turn a recipe reel you saved on Instagram into a grocery list
- Plan a dinner party around everyone’s dietary needs, then send the invites
- Adjust a training plan as your schedule changes
To do these, it connects to the services you already use: email, calendars, payments, health and fitness, smart home, dining, shopping, music and events, plus Meta’s own apps. You connect them one at a time. Some have built-in connectors; where a service has a public API, Muse uses that with credentials you provide; and where there’s neither, it simply uses the website, the way you would.
How it works: a computer, a browser and a guard
The interesting part of Muse is where it does its work. Every user gets a dedicated virtual machine in Meta’s cloud, which Meta calls Muse Secure VM. It holds the agent, your data and any logins you’ve shared, and it has its own browser, which Muse uses to open pages, fill in forms and even negotiate for you.
Next to Muse on that machine runs a second agent, Sentinel, walled off from it at the system level. Muse can’t send anything to the internet unless Sentinel approves it, and Sentinel asks you when it should. On top of that, Muse checks with you before sensitive actions like sending an email or buying something. Everything it has done, and everything it plans to do, is kept in an audit trail you can read.
For email, you pick how far it goes: read only, or read and send. You can change any connection’s access, or cut it off, at any time.
When Muse pays for something
Purchases go through Link, Stripe’s checkout. Link’s agent wallet creates a one-time card number for each purchase, so your real card details never reach the shop or Muse, and Meta says Muse is the first agent covered by Link’s purchase protections: lost or damaged items, price drops and free returns on eligible orders. Shopify’s Shop Pay and 1Password support, so Muse can use logins you already keep there, are listed as coming soon.
What it costs, and where it works
Muse is free to start, and Meta expects most people never to pay. As your usage grows, there are two paid plans: Power at $20 a month and Maximum at $100 a month. You do need to add a payment card to begin, and the app has a meter that warns you before free usage runs out.
At launch it was rolling out in the US, on iPhone and Android, on the web at muse.ai and in WhatsApp chats. Meta says it’s coming to its AI glasses next.
Privacy: what Meta promises, and the record behind it
Meta makes specific promises about Muse:
- Muse can use the logins you share without seeing them, and can’t see your payment details.
- Your conversations and the data on Muse’s machine aren’t shared with Meta’s ad systems.
- You can opt out of your Muse conversations being used to train Meta’s AI.
- Later this year, a Muse Confidential VM will encrypt the whole machine with a key only you hold, “so not even Meta can access it.”
Those are good commitments, and they come from a company with a long record of breaking privacy promises. As TechCrunch noted at launch, Meta paid a $5 billion FTC penalty in 2019 over privacy, and its Cambridge Analytica scandal is still the example people reach for. Meta has published detailed technical documentation for Muse, but its security claims haven’t yet had deep independent review. A fair way to use Muse today is to connect only what an errand needs, keep email on read-only until you trust it, and read the audit trail.
Not the Muse app you might know
If you searched for Muse and expected an infinite canvas for notes and sketches, that’s a different product. The Muse thinking app for iPad and Mac renamed itself Allume in 2026 after selling the Muse name and trademarks; the app, the team and your boards stayed the same. We cover it with other canvas apps in our Kosmik alternatives guide.
Muse and ChatGPT’s dots
Three weeks after Muse, OpenAI launched dots: agents that also work on their own computers in the cloud. They’re aimed at different parts of your life. Dots belong to ChatGPT’s paid work plans and report in Slack and Teams; Muse is free to start, lives in WhatsApp and is built for life admin. How ChatGPT dots work.
Keeping Muse in view
Agents are safest when you can see them working. Muse runs on the web at muse.ai, so in Tabula you can keep it open as a tile on the canvas next to the things it’s handling, like your calendar or the shop it’s buying from, rather than in a tab you forget about. What a spatial browser is.
Questions
- What is Meta Muse?
- Muse is a personal AI agent from Meta, launched on September 8, 2026. Instead of only answering questions, it carries out tasks such as sending emails, booking travel, lowering bills and making purchases, using its own browser on a computer in Meta’s cloud and asking you before sensitive steps.
- Is Meta Muse free?
- Muse is free to start, and Meta expects most people to stay on the free tier. Heavier use moves you to paid plans: Power at $20 a month or Maximum at $100 a month. You need to add a payment card to get started, and the app shows a usage meter.
- Is Meta Muse available outside the US?
- At launch Muse was rolling out in the United States only, on iPhone, Android, the web at muse.ai and in WhatsApp. Meta has not announced dates for other countries.
- Can Muse see my passwords?
- Meta says no. Logins you share with Muse go into secure storage that Muse can use without seeing, and it cannot see passwords you type into its browser yourself or your payment details. These are Meta’s claims; independent security researchers have yet to review them in depth.
- Does Meta use Muse conversations for ads?
- Meta says Muse does not share your conversations or the data on its virtual machine with Meta’s advertising systems. You can also opt out of having your Muse interactions used to train Meta’s AI models.
- Is Meta Muse the same as the Muse app?
- No. The Muse thinking app for iPad and Mac, by Adam Wulf, is a different product. It renamed itself Allume in 2026 after selling the Muse name and trademarks; its accounts, data and subscriptions carried over unchanged.