Personal AI Agents Are Ready To Serve You

Last week, Meta rolled out Muse, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s “personal AI agent built for everyone.” Personal AI Agents Are Ready To Serve You

Artificial-intelligence agents within Muse can book doctor’s appointments, buy products, manage finances, send emails and do any number of other things on users’ behalf.

In theory at least, this saves people time and organizes their lives with less effort. In Meta’s telling, it also democratizes AI.

Zuckerberg first described his vision for “personal superintelligence” last year and previewed Muse in an August essay where he spoke of “putting power in people’s hands to pursue their own aspirations.”

For Muse to work, though, it needs access to users’ data—their emails, calendars, e-commerce sites and bank accounts. And that is where Meta’s strategy seems destined to face hurdles.

People don’t trust big tech companies much, but they are especially wary of Meta. An Oppenheimer & Co. survey of U.S. consumers found just 8% would trust Meta with their passwords, less than a third of the number who would trust Google.

“We see any questions or hesitancy from consumers around data privacy and security as likely the biggest potential headwind for broad-based adoption of consumer AI agents,” Goldman Sachs analyst Eric Sheridan said in a note after Muse’s launch.

Given that backdrop—and a recent groundswell of concern about AI agents going rogue—Meta can ill afford any user-privacy hiccups in Muse’s rollout.

Meta’s announcement of the tool took pains to underline how rock-solid it was. The company described it as “safe, secure, private,” adding that Muse would run on a digitally walled-off virtual machine that no one else’s agents can access.

Zuckerberg said in a post on X Tuesday that the company delayed Muse’s release for several months “to focus on safety and security.”

He dismissed the idea of slowing the pace of frontier AI development in concert with Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX, suggesting there were natural incentives for it to keep AI agents in line.

It isn’t yet clear whether users are buying this. But getting a large segment of Meta’s 3.6 billion users to sign up seems daunting.

Only six years ago, after all, Meta was paying a record $5 billion fine to the Federal Trade Commission for user-privacy breaches in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The following year, 533 million users’ information was leaked.

Transfers of European users’ data to U.S. servers led to a record $1.3 billion fine under the Continent’s stringent data-privacy regulations in 2023.

User-safety litigation, including a recent $18 billion settlement of a case about harm to teens in the U.S., hasn’t helped its reputation.

Meta does have a few advantages. It has unparalleled social-media data and can integrate agents with its Marketplace e-commerce platform.

It is also the first mover in the personal AI assistant game: No other big AI player yet offers anything similar.

Yet being fast out of the gate could come back to bite Meta, too.

If agents make mistakes as Meta works out the kinks, the risk is high that users will lose trust and flee.

The stakes with a personal agent are elevated because agents are empowered to buy products, set appointments and book travel by themselves—all of which could cost users money if the agent errs.

And Meta acknowledges that there will be glitches: When users register for Muse, a warning pops up saying the agent “may make mistakes or take unexpected actions, so review its work.”

Even if a user gives the agent unclear instructions, having it buy a $1,000 item when the user wanted a $10 item might not sit well.

Competitors could also jump in if Meta’s Muse idea takes off. Google is in an especially good position to capitalize on agents, given that it offers email, calendar and cloud-storage apps that could feed them, paired with a cutting-edge AI model.

And even if Meta can overcome its privacy record and Muse becomes a success, its financial impact isn’t likely to be huge.

Light usage of Muse is free, but the company charges $20 or $100 a month for heavier users.

To increase Meta’s earnings per share by roughly 20%, Oppenheimer estimated that the company would have to gather 115 million Muse subscribers paying $20 a month—about double the number of paying subscribers of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

That would be an ambitious goal even without Meta’s trust issues, given that many of the people willing to pay for AI are already customers of OpenAI, Google and others.

But Meta needs it to work. The company is spending big on AI, including an expected $137 billion of capital expenditures this year, fueled by a lucrative and fast-growing ad business.

Beyond its successful use of AI in ads, the company is trying to generate returns on that investment with subscriptions for extra features on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

It is selling outsiders access to its most advanced AI models, and is making a potential cloud-computing push. Muse is another major cog in the return-on-investment engine.

Investors have welcomed the Muse rollout: Meta’s stock is up about 10% since its launch.

But Zuckerberg’s move-fast-and-break-things mantra has broken a lot of things over the years, including his users’ trust. That might cost Meta dearly in the AI era.

Updated: 9-22-2026

Meta’s New AI Agent Is An Instant Hit—and The Backlash Has Already Begun

Amazon blocked the Muse app from shopping on its site, and privacy and security concerns are mounting.

Meta Platforms appears to have a hit AI product on its hands, but the company’s path to ultimate domination in this next chapter of consumer AI use is anything but assured.

Two weeks ago, Meta launched a new, easy-to-use personal AI agent called Muse. The app, which is how users access the agent, has been sitting at No. 1 on Apple’s U.S. App Store since Friday, sending Meta’s stock up 11% Monday.

But it is already facing scrutiny over privacy concerns. Amazon.com in recent days blocked Meta’s AI agent from shopping on its site, and analysts say competitors are expected to launch their own versions of Muse in the near future.

If Meta can hold on to its initial momentum, it stands to benefit massively from a product that could access large swaths of users’ data—from text messages to emails to their calendars—at a time when investors want to see greater returns from the company’s multibillion-dollar spending spree.

One estimate from Truist Securities projects that Muse could add $28.5 billion of incremental revenue for the company by 2030.

“I don’t know whether it’s sustainable because if we learn anything from this space, give Google and OpenAI a couple weeks and they’ll duplicate whatever is out there,” said Truist analyst Youssef Squali.

“At least, as of now, I think the narrative around Meta has been changing.”

Here is a look at the hurdles Meta needs to navigate for Muse to succeed.

Invasion Of Privacy, Security Concerns

Muse becomes more useful as the person using it gives the AI agent more access to their life, including emails, text messages and calendars.

Many people are nervous about handing the passwords over for those accounts, both in general and especially to Meta, analysts say.

An Oppenheimer & Co. survey of U.S. consumers found that only 8% of them would trust Meta with their passwords, compared with 30% who felt comfortable giving them to Google.

Still, Muse has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times since its Sept. 8 launch, according to data from SensorTower, a market intelligence firm.

It’s unclear how many people have given Meta full access to their online lives.

Another related problem is security.

In its launch announcement, Meta emphasized that Muse was built with security in mind and said each agent runs on its own secure, dedicated computer.

Ahead of the launch, Meta’s AI chief, Alexandr Wang, said in an interview that the company was more concerned about the potential for an agent to accidentally leak personal information or delete important emails than about the AI going rogue.

But concerns remain, analysts say.

“If tomorrow we come in and there’s some kind of major hack of some of these agents having taken someone’s credentials or somebody’s credit card information and went berserk, then I think it’ll be negative for the entire space,” said Squali, the Truist analyst.

Access To Other Websites

Muse is also only as good as the websites it has access to, and on Sunday night Amazon made it a worse product.

The online shopping behemoth blocked Muse from accessing its site and purchasing items for its users.

In doing so, Amazon said it wasn’t made aware in advance that Muse would be accessing its store and that it didn’t authorize such action.

“We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate,” an Amazon spokesperson said.

Meta declined to comment on Amazon’s action.

In addition to selling goods, Amazon’s shopping site has a large advertising business, and it won’t want to cede any ground to Meta in that space, analysts said.

If agents do more shopping for users in the future, that means fewer humans to show ads to, and a potential rethinking of Amazon’s business model.

“Almost all of the internet marketplaces either have a very large advertising business or plan to build one over time,” said Josh Beck, a tech analyst at Raymond James.

“So this, I think, is a major chokepoint.” Beck added that the sites need to believe working with AI agents will bring enough new users to their platforms to boost their revenues and not become “net negative.”

Otherwise, they won’t allow agents on their sites, he said. Meta said it has established partnerships with a number of brands, including Shopify, Instacart and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

The early and rapid adoption of Muse that has manifested in recent days is also igniting fears that AI will disrupt certain industries, including financial services.

Shares sold off Tuesday in wealth-management firms, brokerage houses and even big banks, including a drop of more than 6% for Charles Schwab.

Travel-site owner Booking Holdings and insurance-provider Allstate were also hit.

Future Competition

Meta must gain market share and not lose it to the likes of OpenAI and Google, which analysts expect to release comparable products in the near term.

Meta does have a first-mover advantage and, as parent company to Instagram and Facebook, has millions of people’s data already and a distribution mechanism that is almost second to none, analysts say.

The only other comparable product in the market right now is an AI agent from a startup called Instinct that is also gaining steam but is invite-only.

“Time to market matters here,” said Ken Gawrelski, an analyst with Wells Fargo. “These assistants get better and better as we, the consumers, learn how to best interact with them and direct our agents.”

At the same time, he added, Google has a lot of computing capacity it could redeploy to create a similar product in terms of privacy and security. Muse uses a significant amount of computing since each agent runs on its own virtual computer.

Analysts also expect OpenAI to announce a consumer AI agent in the next week or two, and for Apple to get in the game at some point, too.

“It’s way too early to have a firm view on how this will develop,” said Beck, the Raymond James analyst. “But everyone started to move in this direction.”

Meta’s Muse Drags Down Stocks That Depend On ‘Consumer Inertia’

Shares of major banks, insurers and online travel agencies slid on Tuesday as investors fear that tools like Meta Platforms Inc.’s personal AI agent could disrupt businesses that benefit from so-called consumer inertia, the tendency to keep buying something out of habit even when a better alternative exists.

The S&P 500 Financials Index shed nearly 2% to close at the lowest level since July, trailing a broader market that was roughly flat.

Shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo Co. fell more than 3% each, while Morgan Stanley declined 2.9%. Insurer Allstate Corp. fell 5.5% and brokerage Charles Schwab Corp. finished more than 6% lower.

Companies that help users book travel accommodations were also hit, with Booking Holdings Inc. falling 2.6%.

In Europe, telecommunications was the worst performing sector in the benchmark Stoxx 600, with France’s Orange SA and British carrier BT Group Plc dropping about 4% each.

Gym chain Planet Fitness Inc. closed 9.5% lower.

The downturn came as Muse, Meta’s new AI agent, rose to the top of Apple Inc.’s US app store.

The product can complete digital tasks on a user’s behalf by connecting to third-party services like Gmail and OpenTable. Shares of Meta jumped 11% on Monday on signs of its rapid ascent.

As artificial intelligence assistants like Muse and Instinct improve at price comparison, trip booking and dealing with customer service interactions, industries that rely on recurring bills, negotiable pricing and add-ons could come under pressure, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s trading desk said in a note.

Muse is “no doubt a negative for those kinds of companies,” said Rhys Williams, chief strategist at Wayve Capital Management. “Right now it’s more of a curiosity, but I think two years from now we’re all going to have agents.”

Goldman said telecoms, insurance and utilities are the industries to watch if AI agents make it easier and cheaper to switch service providers.

Its basket of “consumer inertia” stocks at risk of disruption include telecom carriers AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc., insurers Allstate Corp. and Progressive Corp., streaming service owners Netflix Inc. and Paramount Skydance Corp., and travel booking sites Expedia and Booking.

The Goldman basket shed 2.6% on Tuesday, its worst day since February, bringing its losses to more than 7% over the last six sessions.

Personal AI agents also have the potential to shift customers away from established online platforms owned by the likes of Uber Technologies Inc., Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and William Tong said in a note.

They see Muse and Instinct acting as “toll collectors,” generating revenues from transactions that go through AI apps.

The selloff on Tuesday was reminiscent of a meltdown in software-as-a-service firms earlier this year on the back of Anthropic PBC’s launch of agentic tools such as Claude Cowork.

Citrini Research, which published a bearish report in February that dragged down shares of delivery, payments and software companies, said on Monday night that consumers may start to probe businesses that benefit from transactional friction.

“Tomorrow, you might see something that makes you ask how much money health insurers make simply because people won’t sit on the phone for 5 hours trying to get coverage approved,” the firm wrote on X.

“Tactics that worked when consumer behavior was dictated by human psychology will fall by the wayside.”

The firm also released a report on Tuesday focused on the impact of “agentic consumer adoption.”

“Consumer-facing agents have been kicking around for a while,” Citrini wrote, but Muse “seems like a watershed moment, not necessarily because of its technical abilities but because of its reach.”

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