Meta expands Muse to small businesses

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Meta is rolling out a version of its AI agent, Muse, for small businesses, offering access to business accounts and third-party tools, including QuickBooks, Shopify and Slack.

First launched on Sept. 8, Muse reached 5 million downloads in North America in three weeks, displacing ChatGPT at the top of the U.S. App Store charts, where it still sits at number one as of today, despite emerging security concerns.

The expansion for SMBs, revealed on Tuesday, comes a day after OpenAI unveiled its Muse response: Dots, an always-on AI agent designed to work autonomously across more than 4,000 connected apps. OpenAI said Dots can pursue goals in the background; work through tools, including Slack and Teams; and take actions on users' behalf, subject to permissions and approval controls.

The developments point to a broader push by AI companies to move beyond chatbots and toward agents capable of carrying out multistep tasks across the software people use for work.

Muse for small businesses

Meta is positioning its new agent as just that -- a tool for users to hand off multistep jobs across the software they already use. Rather than employ the agent to simply ask questions, users can give Muse broader goals, such as running a business or finding new customers.

Business owners can also now connect the agent to Facebook and Instagram business accounts, as well as Meta advertising accounts, to access business analytics and customer interactions.

Mark Beccue, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget, said the expansion reflects growing interest in using agents to help small businesses, but he questioned whether Meta can displace more established players.

Beccue said small businesses could instead turn to prebuilt agents from platforms such as Google’s, while Muse may have a stronger fit among consumer-facing online retailers already operating in Meta’s ecosystem.

Safeguarding against increased autonomy

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