Meta’s Muse Could Upend All Kinds of Businesses. It Hasn’t Yet

Muse came up again and again on corporate earnings calls this month. Meta says more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have activated the agent, and that over a quarter of them use it to shop, more than any other task. Wall Street's worry is that agents like this will grind down brand loyalty, kick off price wars, and squeeze margins.

But when WIRED canvassed executives at roughly 50 companies, the reported impact was close to nothing. DoorDash counted agent orders in the hundreds. Hilton called agent bookings insignificant. Life Time said it has seen zero agent-driven cancellations. The money Meta describes and the money these companies can see don't line up yet, and the next few quarters will decide which picture is real.

We think both sides are telling a version of the truth, and the gap between them is the story. Meta's numbers measure activation and intent. The companies are measuring completed transactions that hit their own books. Plenty of Muse shopping may be flowing through the 10 retail partners Meta points to, including Walmart, Best Buy, and Gap, many of which last reported before Muse launched. So 'it hasn't happened yet' and 'it's happening fast' can both be accurate this quarter. They can't both stay accurate for long.

The most useful detail in the piece is the least glamorous one. Chipotle found that agents were stumbling on loyalty discounts and after-hours ordering, and it is now cleaning up its website code so agents can finish the job. That's what an early platform shift actually looks like: not a flood of revenue, but companies quietly rebuilding for a new kind of visitor. We'd bet more firms follow Costco and Extra Space Storage, which say chatbot-driven sales are surging and plan to optimize for agents next.

We're genuinely open to agents being good for shoppers. An assistant that cancels the gym membership you forgot, or compares prices without fatigue, is a real consumer benefit. Executives waving away comparison shopping as a threat because of brand trust and service quality sounds to us a bit like wishful thinking. If agents work as advertised, they will lean on price, and that pressure is a feature for buyers even if it stings sellers.

The harder part is who sits in the middle. Mark Zuckerberg has said Meta plans to charge businesses a fee on Muse transactions and expects that revenue to eventually top its ad business. If that happens, Meta becomes a toll booth between customers and merchants, and the companies optimizing their sites for Muse today are building the road to that booth. InterContinental's cautious stance in its talks with Meta reads as smart to us.

Then there's liability. Bank of America has now warned customers that if they hand login credentials to an AI assistant, they're responsible for what happens. That's a quiet but major shift of risk onto consumers, and it's going to matter the first time an agent makes an expensive mistake. Agentic shopping needs a clear answer on who pays for errant orders before it goes mainstream, and right now the answer is the person who clicked yes.

Positions are moving fast. Amazon blocked Muse last month, arguing customers would rather use its own Alexa shopping agent, and this week said it expects to work with outside agents. Insurify blocked Muse and then reversed course after building technology meant to ensure agents present accurate quotes. DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, who sits on Meta's board, has called some of the current agent hype potentially 'delusional.'