Design matters more than ever in consumer AI, as long as you have money to play.
It's been interesting watching the rise of Muse online as someone who's been deep in the consumer agentic product space for a few years. There's nothing fundamentally novel about it - all of its core components and capabilities have existed for over a year in most frontier agentic products and harnesses (Codex, Claude Code, Hermes, OpenClaw, etc.). It doesn't do anything that you couldn't do 6 months ago with a bit of tinkering.
But Meta seems to have put the pieces together in just the right way. The hype around Muse shows the enduring value of design, product marketing, and an ad-driven business model. It may also be the first time that agentic AI clicks for the average consumer, putting Meta in the lead for owning consumer AI in a way that can actually scale.
Any leading agentic harness has had the same agentic capabilities since 2025 - computer & browser use, cloud workflows, cron jobs and routines, mobile remote control, etc. But all of it has been compounding in complexity, resulting in apps like ChatGPT and Claude becoming a total mess.
Personally, I'm still committed to the ChatGPT ecosystem, but after using Muse, the clunkiness of ChatGPT is stark. The whole desktop ChatGPT vs Codex switch is dumb. The chat vs work switch is dumb. ChatGPT projects vs Codex local vs Codex cloud projects is mega dumb. I need to make 10 choices each time I want to start or continue a chat. Just give me one chat that orchestrates all of it in the background.
Muse did just that and abstracted away the unnecessary complexity. There's no model selector, work vs chat switch, obscure slash commands, or mentions of MCPs or cron jobs. It's one main chat, and everything else serves to support it. Most importantly, it gave users a clear mental model - this is your personal helper with their own computer.
Ads Funding Tokens
ChatGPT and Claude are in the business of selling tokens. Unless you pay $100+/mo, you won't get access to the best models and enough tokens to run useful agentic workflows. Most average consumers don't even pay the $20/mo.
Meanwhile, Muse's free tier is extremely permissive because it's funded by the best ad business in the world. As of now, unless you're a power user, you won't even think about tokens or limits when using Muse daily. That's only possible because Meta is not in the business of selling tokens. They sell attention.
Making AI Cute Again
ChatGPT's and Claude's product branding is geared towards techies. Muse went deep into anthropomorphization and the cuteness factor to help you build personal affinity with your agent. Personality is now a core design dimension for AI products — capability matters, but likability drives engagement and stickiness.
The Competition
Interestingly, what's making Muse a success also explains why Google has mostly failed to capture the zeitgeist so far — compute and ad money without the product chops. OpenAI fumbled by not investing in ads earlier and refocusing on enterprise. Apple fumbled because they never built the AI expertise. Now Meta will pick up the pieces — Muse is the first positive indicator.