Inside Meta's grind to turn Muse from a clunky chatbot into an AI sensation

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrated its Muse AI assistant during the company's Connect event. However, AI staff feared Muse days before launch as it had difficulty speaking good English. Ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman's team worked tirelessly to transform Muse into a successful product. After a long and arduous effort, Muse has become a hit, says Meta's 29-year-old AI chief, Alexandr Wang.

A year ago, Meta doubted its ability to compete in the AI race; now it boasts one of the industry's hottest products. Muse, Meta's new personal AI assistant, has surged to the top of the App Store and marked a triumph for Zuckerberg's substantial AI investments. During Meta's Connect conference, Wang called Muse a "banger." Crafting the assistant required months of relentless work, a team led by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and thousands of employees from across Meta, who were tasked with teaching the agent how to perform tasks.

Meta also acquired top AI agent talent through acquisitions, including the leaders of Dreamer, an AI agent startup. Despite competitors like Instinct and OpenAI's anticipated rival launch, privacy concerns have arisen as Muse requires extensive access to users' accounts. However, Muse's success and a 20% rise in Meta's stock price since its launch have boosted morale and demonstrated Meta's continued presence in the AI race.