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Pranav Dixit
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Meta
Meta is bringing its hot new AI agent Muse to its smart glasses.
The move, announced Wednesday at its annual Connect conference in Menlo Park, California, gives Meta a new way to put Muse directly in front of users throughout the day.
Muse has become a fast-rising entrant in the increasingly competitive AI agent market: software that can take actions on a person's behalf, rather than merely answer questions or generate text. Instead of opening an app or sitting down at a computer, people could eventually ask Muse for help through a pair of glasses already on their face.
With a connection to your Muse personal AI agent, Meta's glasses "offer more ways than ever to help you manage daily life, whether you're building healthy habits or navigating a busy calendar, all without reaching for your phone," the company said in an announcement.
At Connect, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will "start upgrading the AI experience on Meta glasses" in the coming weeks.
The announcement makes clear that the company sees its hardware business as important for the agent, which launched earlier this month and quickly rose to the top of the App Store charts, beating rivals like ChatGPT.
Meta's broader hardware blitz at Connect also included Ray-Ban Meta Audio, a new audio-focused pair of glasses. It said it expects to offer more than 100 styles across Ray-Ban, Oakley, and Meta Glasses by the end of the year. It also announced Meta VR Glasses, which it said will offer a more immersive way to watch movies, play games, and work in virtual reality, and will go on sale next spring.
Meta is waging a bigger battle over AI agents. Already, Muse can browse the web, make calls, shop, and handle other chores. Meta has also announced partnerships with companies including Shopify, PayPal, Expedia, and Instacart.
That puts Meta in a heated race with startups such as Instinct, an invite-only personal AI assistant founded by 23-year-old Noah Shinn. Instinct launched before Muse and quickly caught on with Silicon Valley, turning the tiny startup into an unlikely rival for Meta.
Personal AI agents are still early products, with uneven results. In a recent hands-on review, Business Insider's Katie Notopoulos found that Muse could help organize an inbox and identify subscriptions, while it struggled with school forms, medical scheduling, and some online checkouts.
Muse also faces resistance from the websites and services they are meant to navigate. Earlier this week, Amazon blocked Muse from its shopping site, signaling that some companies may not embrace agents as readily as users do.
Have a tip? Contact Pranav Dixit via email at [email protected] or Signal at 1-408-905-9124. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
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Pranav Dixit
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Pranav Dixit is the Meta Correspondent at Business Insider based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He writes about Meta’s products, policies, and internal workings while examining how the company’s decisions shape how billions of people connect and communicate.Previously, Pranav was the India-based technology correspondent for BuzzFeed News, covering the impact of Silicon Valley’s largest companies on the culture, society, and politics of more than a billion people in South Asia. He has also been a senior news editor at Engadget and ran technology coverage at the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest national newspapers.Pranav’s reporting has shed light on the human consequences of Big Tech’s quest for growth in emerging markets, and sparked widespread conversations about the impact of American technology companies on the Global South. In 2019, he won Syracuse University’s Mirror Award for a boots-on-the-ground feature about how WhatsApp misinformation sparked gruesome lynchings in rural India. He has also reported from Kashmir, a volatile geopolitical hotspot, documenting the world’s longest-running internet shutdown.His work has been widely cited by major national and international publications, and he has been featured on the BBC, Al Jazeera, and podcasts such as Vox Media’s Land of the Giants to discuss his work. He has also spoken in journalism classes including at UC Berkeley’s graduate journalism program. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vox, Time, The Information, and Al Jazeera.Pranav moved to the United States in 2021 from New Delhi, India, to be a fellow at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, where he studied the evolution of the American tech press and ways newsrooms around the world can cover technology and society more effectively.Got a tip about Meta or anything else in Silicon Valley? Contact Pranav via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1408-905-9124), or email him at [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also reach him on WhatsApp at +857-753-3949 or DM him on X (@PranavDixit) or BlueSky (@pranavdixit.bsky.social).Pranav keeps sources anonymous. Please use a non-work device to reach out.Expertise: Meta, Facebook, WhatsApp, Llama, AI, Threads, Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, social media, platforms, immigration
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