Key Points

• Meta's new AI agent Muse drew more than 500,000 users in its first week in the US. The app is designed to automate everyday tasks like research and booking appointments.
• Meta admitted that Muse is heavily inspired by the open-source project OpenClaw after users noticed nearly identical files and behavior rules.
• Whether Muse lasts depends largely on whether users are willing to give AI agents like it access to their private accounts and sensitive data.

Meta's new AI agent is off to a strong start, but Meta itself says the product is "heavily inspired" by the open-source project OpenClaw. Some of the file names and contents are nearly identical.

Meta's personal AI agent Muse drew more than 500,000 users in the week after its September 8 launch, including more than 250,000 daily active users. Together they entered more than two million prompts, The Information reports, citing internal data.

Muse is available in the US as a standalone app and through WhatsApp. It has reached number one in Apple's App Store with more than 31,000 ratings. The agent is meant to handle routine work for users, like researching and booking trips, finding deals, tracking expenses, or sorting out scheduling conflicts.

Meta openly credits OpenClaw for the idea behind Muse

Meta has also acknowledged that Muse borrows heavily from the open-source project OpenClaw. Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta Superintelligence Labs and former GitHub CEO, wrote on X that Muse is "definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw" but was "built from scratch." Friedman said his team fell in love with OpenClaw and set out to build something similar that could scale to billions of people. He called OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger a "genius."

Users on X had already noticed that Muse uses some of the same file names as OpenClaw, with nearly identical contents. One example is a SOUL.md file, a text file that defines an AI agent's personality, communication style, and rules of behavior.

Ansh Nanda, co-founder of an AI app, claimed in a viral post that "Muse is LITERALLY OpenClaw for normies." When someone asked why the file names and contents were nearly identical, Friedman simply replied, "we thought that Peter [Steinberger] got those things exactly right."

TechCrunch says the move fits Meta's familiar playbook of spotting promising products and copying their best features. The best-known example is Meta's adoption of the Stories format that Snapchat invented.

Strong early numbers don't guarantee Muse will last

It's still unclear whether the early interest in Muse will turn into lasting use. According to TechCrunch, Muse even beats ChatGPT's early mobile launch when you compare platforms and market availability directly.

OpenAI has also discussed building its own personal AI assistant in response to Muse, according to The Information. The real test is whether users will give AI agents access to their personal data, accounts, and sensitive information.

The Information / Muse user numbers

Nat Friedman / X post

TechCrunch / Meta and OpenClaw