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Title: Meta's New 'Personal AI Agent' Muse Beats ChatGPT in Downloads - and
Get Blocked by Amazon

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/09/22/0116...

Meta's AI "personal agent" Muse overtook ChatGPT as the #1 iOS free app in
the U.S. on Friday, reports CNBC - and it's still showing more downloads as
of Monday night. Muse now has over 2.5 million downloads since its debut less
than two weeks ago, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower... [Muse] is
currently ahead of popular services like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Polymarket and
Kashi... It's also ahead of rival AI apps like Anthropic's Claude and
SpaceXAI's Grok AI, in addition to the Facebook-parent's own Meta AI app...
Meta pitched the app as a way for consumers to manage and direct supercharged
digital assistants that can perform a number of tasks across the web, like
filling out electronic forms and organizing email inboxes... "I think up to
this point most of the agentic use cases have not really been for normal
people," Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told CNBC in a "Squawk on the Street"
interview on Monday. "Now you've got Meta's Muse and other agents out there
that are starting to maybe get more potential for more broad-based adoption."
The buzz around Meta was also reflected in the stock, which surged more than
11% on Monday. Amazon is already blocking Muse, reports GeekWire. Amazon
first tried to get Meta to voluntarily exclude Amazon, but they were
unsuccessful: The problem, Amazon says, is that it never agreed to any of it.
Meta didn't tell Amazon that Muse would access its store, the agent doesn't
identify itself when it browses, and it appears to capture and store customer
credentials, which the company says could create privacy and security risks.
As of Sunday night, people trying to use Muse to shop on Amazon were seeing
the popup, "Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's
Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed..." Amazon has spent
the past year trying to keep outside agents off its site, suing Perplexity
over its Comet browser and moving to block shopping agents from Google and
OpenAI. [Amazon won a preliminary injunction against Perplexity in March, the
article poitns out, "then lost it on Aug. 4, when the Ninth Circuit ruled
that the user - not the AI company - was the one accessing Amazon's computers
under federal anti-hacking law. The court denied Amazon's petition for
rehearing on Sept. 10."] On Sunday night, Amazon said it is in direct
conversation with Meta about the issue. Asked whether it would consider
taking legal action, the company declined to comment. The business stakes are
high for Amazon. In addition to operating its flagship e-commerce site,
Amazon generated more than $68 billion in ad revenue last year - a business
that depends on people browsing its pages and seeing sponsored products. Muse
also appears to scrape account data, reports CNBC. But Shopify, however, "is
working with Meta on Muse access. Shopify CEO Tobias Lutke announced Monday
that the e-commerce site was partnering with Muse to allow agentic checkout
in its online stores."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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