(Bloomberg) -- Meta Platforms Inc. unveiled a new artificial intelligence agent designed to carry out tasks on a user's behalf, advancing Mark Zuckerberg's vision of a future where people each have a personalized AI assistant.
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Called Muse, the new agent shares its name with the series of models Meta's AI lab is developing and can help automate a variety of tasks. Meta said the tool will assist with online shopping, buying movie tickets, scheduling appointments like tennis lessons or even filling out a permission slip for a class field trip. The app will be released to US-based users on Tuesday.
Zuckerberg, the Facebook co-founder who built Meta into a social networking giant, has drawn a sharp distinction between business agents and consumer-oriented personal agents. He sees the greatest opportunity for his company in developing the latter category. In a 6,500-word manifesto published last month, the chief executive officer outlined a vision for that technology: "Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about," he said.
Meta aims to eventually offer the product to the billions of people that already use its social media apps, including Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. "That's one of the design principles of the product: making it really easy to use and simple for the everyday user," Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang said in an interview on Tuesday.
The months-in-the-making personal AI agent is designed to be run on a dedicated, virtual computer in the cloud. "It's an extremely secure architecture that we've built," Wang said. Muse keeps a record of what it's done and plans to do, doesn't share data with Meta's ads system, and is careful about how it ingests information. "Muse is constantly checking in with you before it does anything sensitive or important," Wang added.
For example, Muse checks before it makes any purchases, according to Wang, who uses his own agent — which he named after his dog, Euler — to identify and buy furniture to decorate his new home. On less sensitive matters, Muse can operate autonomously, Wang said. His Muse helps him stay organized, offers workout ideas and helps plan his meals. "I really use it as a second brain," Wang said.