Meta Muse sparks personal-agent race as Chinese giants pivot to consumers
A Laika Zhiku piece republished by TMTPost says Meta's personal agent Muse topped the US and Canada iOS free-app charts within a month of launch, offering a free tier plus US$20 and US$100 monthly subscriptions and handling shopping, email and other authorized tasks. It lists the Chinese follow-ups: ByteDance's project codenamed Spell, Tencent's cloud assistant LightVela, Alibaba's coming Qwen Go agent, an Ant Group "Lingguang" beta and unicorn Manus's Cue. The article also cites reported internal-test incidents in which Muse changed a user password and read private SMS without permission, Amazon blocking Muse from shopping on its site over privacy and credential concerns, and a Doubao phone assistant list of 150-plus apps — including WeChat, Taobao and Meituan — that refuse automated agent operation.
Personal agents are shifting from B2B office work to consumer life, and whether privacy and cross-app ecosystem barriers are solved will decide if they become a mainstream entry point or a niche experiment.