See more of our coverage in your search results.
AI, AI, captain!
Meta today announced the launch of a new artificial intelligence assistant designed to aid small business owners with their slate of operations — from creating ad campaigns to analyzing financial performance to sorting and answering incoming mail.
Dubbed Muse for Small Business, it’s part of Meta’s push to make AI accessible for everyone. “I make money being out at the meat cutting table, not in my office,” said Tom Mulholland, the 66-year-old owner of Mulholland Grocery in Malvern, IA. “If [AI] can take those [office-tasks] off my plate, then it allows me to make more money.”
Concurring is April Polk, founder and CEO of the Columbus-based women’s clothing and accessory brand, JaeLuxe Shoetique.
“It’s very competitive with these larger brands … but she’s, like, my secret weapon,” Polk said.
She would be Chase — business owners are prompted to name their Muse upon sign-up. And for Polk, one of 35 business owners invited to Meta’s Los Angeles campus in early September to test and refine the product, she helps with just about everything.
“She looked at my social media handles and revamped my brand guidelines. She overhauled my website. She updated and corrected my email flows. She writes my strategies and looks at my numbers and tells me when I need to change [something] or implement more funds,” Polk said.
Available both online and in the app store in the U.S. and Canada, Muse for Small Business is a new artificial intelligence product from Meta. In addition to the Small Business agent, Meta unveiled an AI assistant for personal use earlier in September. And unlike generative artificial intelligence, which produces text, image or video in response to user prompts, both are agentic models, meaning theey can work autonomously and take action on behalf of users.
Muse for Small Business is free but has a usage limit. Meta is also offering subscription plans at $20/month or $100/month for users who want unlimited plans.
For Polk, a mother of three who runs both her online and brick-and-mortar shop without any additional employees, Chase is most helpful because she plugs directly into most of the tools the company is already using such as Intuit QuickBooks, Klaviyo and Canva. Meta also supports integrations with programs like Dropbox, Shopify, Notion and Stripe. Polk said Chase won’t make changes without her approval first, but given the myriad ways in which the agent has taken work off her plate and streamlined workflows, she’s willing to heed much of the advice she gives.
The user-generated content influencer program they built in tandem is a particular highlight.
“Chase built [the entire campaign] from scratch — monitoring my emails, replying to people interested in joining the program, even sending out contracts,” Polk said. “It looks like I spent some good money and had a team build it.”
At Mulholland Grocery, located 30 miles from Omaha, Neb., Mulholland leads a team of ten but tells a similar story.
He named his agent Wall-E. So far, they’ve worked together to produce social media ads, organize the employee schedule and summarize special order requests that used to get buried in Mulholland’s inbox.
“I’m already working 65 hours a week and can’t afford to hire someone to do these things for me,” Mulholland said.
A self described “not technical person,” the advertisement work came first.
When his grocery warehouse catalog arrived, Mulholland simply highlighted items he was going to carry and sent Wall-E the pictures. His advertisements were spit out 15 minutes later.
“I was [previously] spending hours typing all this out,” Mulholland said.
The saved time allows Mulholland to focus on the work that separates his business from Dollar General, the only other grocer in town.
“High quality meats and sausages are extremely important to my business,” Mulholland said. “I have customers that will drive two or three hours just to come pick them up for us.”
His fully-loaded breakfast bratwurst — filled with crispy hash browns, scrambled eggs, sauteed onions and peppers, sharp cheddar and smoke gouda cheese — sells out the same day it’s put out. The product is incredibly time-intensive to make but one of the reason Mulholland Grocery landed on the United States Chamber of Commerce’s 2026 top-100 small businesses list.
“I do the work that the other people don’t want to and I do it well,” Mulholland said. “[If AI can] save me a couple hours a week [to do] that work, that makes a big difference.”