Meta's AI Agent Muse Pushes ByteDance and Tencent to Speed Up Their Own Plans

On September 8, Meta launched its personal AI agent Muse. It can send emails and book trips for users, and can access data from apps like email, calendar, payments and shopping with user permission. Users can revoke access anytime.

Unlike traditional chatbots that just answer questions, Muse is built to take real actions for users. It handles small tasks across platforms, and Zuckerberg sees it as a key step toward personal superintelligence.

After Muse went viral overseas, ByteDance sped up its secret project Spell, led by the Doubao phone assistant team, aiming to merge it with Doubao and release it soon. Tencent also launched LightVela in late September, a cloud assistant accessed via WeChat that works around the clock, now in developer testing.