Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is staking its artificial intelligence future on Muse, a newly launched AI agent that has already drawn strong reviews from early adopters and analysts alike.
Muse has been described as the first genuinely capable AI agent designed for everyday users, winning attention for its accessibility and broad functionality after a high-profile debut.
The deeper challenge for the company, however, is not whether Muse works well, but whether consumers will trust Meta enough to hand it access to their wallets, calendars, inboxes, and shopping habits.
Mark Zuckerberg carries more trust and safety baggage than perhaps any other major tech CEO, having been repeatedly summoned to Washington over issues ranging from the Cambridge Analytica scandal to antitrust concerns to Facebook’s role in the January 6 Capitol attack and online child safety.
Despite that history, Meta’s suite of apps remains extraordinarily popular, with Zuckerberg citing that 43% of people worldwide use products including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.
Critics who argue users will never trust Muse may be underestimating how deeply people already rely on Meta’s ecosystem, sharing intimate moments, syncing contacts, and sending private messages across its platforms daily.
Zuckerberg has pushed back on trust concerns directly, arguing that privacy and security were built into Muse’s systems from the ground up, making user confidence central to the product’s design rather than an afterthought.
“People aren’t going to adopt it, unless they trust it,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with Joanna Stern on “The New Things,” adding, “We are entering a phase where trust and alignment is actually going to be the most important next set of capabilities.”
Justin Patterson, KeyBanc managing director, told Yahoo Finance that “Meta is having its moment,” raising his price target on Meta to $900 following the Muse announcement, with shares climbing almost 13% over the past week.
Meta’s window of opportunity may not last indefinitely, as users could opt to wait for competing autonomous agents from Google or a future enhanced version of Apple’s Siri rather than committing to Muse now.
For the moment, Meta holds the market largely to itself in this category, and being first with a capable product may prove sufficient for Muse to establish a dominant foothold before rivals arrive.
The irony is that Zuckerberg’s most controversial asset, a massive and deeply embedded user base conditioned to share freely on Meta platforms, may ultimately be the company’s strongest argument for why Muse succeeds where others cannot.
