Nat Friedman says Meta built Muse "from scratch" but was "heavily inspired" by OpenClaw, as users compare the two, including calling Muse "OpenClaw for normies" (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Meta's AI assistant, Muse, has been compared to OpenClaw by users, with some even calling it "OpenClaw for normies." According to Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta's Superintelligence Labs, Muse was "heavily inspired" by OpenClaw but was built from scratch. Friedman stated that the team at Meta had fallen in love with OpenClaw and wanted to create something similar that could be scaled to billions of people.

A security researcher, Patrick Wardle, has discovered a zero-day vulnerability in the Muse macOS app that could allow attackers to take control of a user's AI agent. The exploit required local access to the user's device and utilized an undocumented Muse setting that enabled potential attackers to redirect transcription processing from Meta's servers to their own endpoint. This gave the attacker access to the Muse account and potentially allowed them to access sensitive information.

Meta has since issued a patch for the vulnerability. The exploit highlighted the risks of AI assistants with broad permissions, as Muse requires users to grant it significant access to their device and apps. The vulnerability was discovered shortly after Muse's launch, and Meta has been informed but has not yet provided further details on the patch.

Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, TechCrunch, Mashable, TechRadar, The Verge — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.