Meta’s Muse And The ‘Cutification’ Of AI Agents

Meta has introduced a Labubu-esque mascot named Jolly as the face of Muse, its personal AI agent. Jolly is expected to live in Muse Charm, a Tamagotchi-style pocket-sized device. Muse can answer your emails, buy groceries and coordinate event plans with your friends. The cute agent has reached 10 million users in just over a month. But the bigger story is the cutification of AI. Big tech companies are increasingly using cute avatars to lower psychological barriers and counter public anxiety toward AI agents.

Why are Meta and other technology companies investing time and money in cute mascots in the middle of an AI race? Why not just focus on improving the technology? The answer is simple: public trust in big tech has collapsed. Only 20% of people in the U.S. feel confident in large tech companies.

The pendulum has swung far away from the tech optimism of the 1990s to the 2010s. Back then, Silicon Valley tech founders were celebrated as visionary, disruptive innovators. In 2010, The Social Network hit cinemas, grossing $224 million worldwide and Mark Zuckerberg was named Time’s Person of the Year. But the mood today is completely different, as captured by the documentary The Social Dilemma, the bestselling book Careless People and the movie The Social Reckoning.

The collective psyche is more critical and distrustful of big tech and AI. Facebook’s old motto: “move fast and break things,” once sounded like ambition but now reads as a cautionary tale. In fact, 67% of people in the U.S. view Mark Zuckerberg unfavorably, a rare bipartisan point of unity among Democratic and Republican voters.

For agentic AI to function, it needs access to highly sensitive information, including email, calendar and contacts. Data many are unwilling to share with their own friends and family. It also requires us to hand over a level of control beyond what we’re used to with chatbots, where the human still makes the final decision.