Meta’s AI agent Muse has passed 5 million downloads in just 22 days, a faster start than any of the chatbots it is chasing. According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, as reported by 9to5Mac, Muse crossed the mark on September 30, a little over three weeks after Meta launched it on September 8. The figure is a projection by Sensor Tower senior insights analyst Kara Lee rather than a number published by Meta itself.
The comparison is what makes it headline material. Sensor Tower says ChatGPT took 56 days to reach 5 million downloads, xAI’s Grok took 103 days and Anthropic’s Claude took 492. Those numbers come with caveats. Claude and Grok were available only on iPhone in their first days, while Muse launched on both iOS and Android, although only in the United States and Canada. ChatGPT also arrived in November 2022, when most people had never used an AI chatbot at all.
Muse is an agent rather than a simple chatbot. It can browse the web and act for its users, sending emails, shopping, filling out forms and booking travel, and it is available as a standalone app and inside WhatsApp. It has held the top spot among free apps on the US App Store for 12 days running, having overtaken ChatGPT soon after launch. The basic app is free, with paid tiers of $20 and $100 a month for heavier users.
Fast as it is, Muse is not in uncharted territory. Sensor Tower estimates that only 23 apps have passed 5 million US downloads within 22 days of launch, and about 85% of them are games such as Fortnite, Pokémon Go and Candy Crush. The only three that are not games are Disney+, HBO Max and Threads, which picked up roughly 20 million, 18 million and 14 million downloads over the same stretch. Threads, of course, is also a Meta product, which says a great deal about the reach the company can bring to bear on a launch.
That reach is a big part of this story too. Sensor Tower says Meta began ramping up advertising for Muse on September 16, and downloads jumped 73% on the previous day. Between September 14 and 27, Muse took up to half of Meta’s daily house ad impressions, with Facebook and WhatsApp giving up space to make room. In the week of September 21, Muse ranked among the top 15 brands in the US by advertising impressions. Meta can buy attention across its own apps on a scale few rivals can match; whether those downloads turn into daily users is a different question.
The launch has also hit resistance. Amazon began blocking Muse from its retail site on September 21, according to Bloomberg, after Meta declined a request to remove the bot. Amazon described Muse as an undisclosed third party operating without consent and raised concerns about customer credentials. Meta says Muse “has no visibility into people’s passwords or payment methods,” and retailers including Walmart, Shopify and Best Buy have taken the opposite approach by announcing integrations.
Privacy is the larger worry. For Muse to do its job, users have to connect email accounts, bank accounts and credit cards. NPR summed up the trade off: Muse “could change the way we experience the internet, it’ll just need a whole lot of your personal data first.” Meta told the broadcaster it takes privacy and security “extremely seriously” and that any credentials a person shares go into secure storage so the agent can use them without seeing them.
Rivals are not standing still. OpenAI unveiled Dots, an always on agent platform, at its DevDay event on September 29, and chief financial officer Sarah Friar has said it will eventually reach consumers after launching for businesses. In cars, Tesla owners are already handing tasks to Grok Bot. The race to build a personal agent that people trust with their accounts is now crowded.
For Meta, the next few weeks will show whether Muse is a habit or a novelty. Downloads driven by heavy promotion are one thing; people returning every day once the ads ease off is another. The answer will also depend on how many retailers follow Amazon in shutting the door, and how many users decide that letting an agent into their inbox and bank account is worth the convenience.
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