Meta’s Muse AI Agent Is Already Beating ChatGPT’s Mobile Launch

Twelve days. That’s all it took for Meta’s new Meta Muse AI agent to out-download and out-use ChatGPT’s own mobile debut in the U.S. and Canada. According to market intelligence firm Apptopia, Muse pulled in 1.8 million iOS downloads in the U.S. and Canada in its first 12 days, compared to ChatGPT’s 1.3 million over the same window after its own launch. Daily active users tell the same story: 642,000 for Muse in the U.S. against 231,000 for ChatGPT at the same point in its rollout.

That alone would be a solid tech headline. But Meta didn’t stop at an app. At its Connect 2026 keynote in Menlo Park this week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made Muse the centerpiece of the entire event — announcing a digital avatar, a wearable keychain gadget, integration into Meta’s smart glasses lineup, and control over your Mac. If you’ve been wondering whether Meta could actually compete in the consumer AI agent race, this week answered that question.

The Meta Muse AI Agent’s Numbers Are Beating ChatGPT’s Own Launch

The Meta Muse AI agent launched in early September and is built on Muse Spark, Meta’s multimodal model designed specifically for agentic tasks — the kind of AI that doesn’t just answer questions but goes and does things on your behalf, connecting to your email, calendar, and apps. Unlike ChatGPT’s iOS-only debut, Muse launched on both the App Store and Google Play, though currently only in the U.S. and Canada.

To make a fair comparison, Apptopia narrowed its analysis to iOS-only data in those two markets for both apps’ first 12 days. Muse still came out ahead: 1.8 million downloads to ChatGPT’s 1.3 million, and 359,000 iOS daily active users versus ChatGPT’s smaller total at the same stage. Zoom out to Muse’s full global numbers and the app has logged 2.8 million total installs, according to Appfigures, and climbed from the No. 2 slot on the U.S. App Store straight past ChatGPT to No. 1.

That kind of adoption curve out of the gate is rare — it’s the same pattern this site covered when enterprise AI agent adoption tripled in 2026, and it echoes the broader story of AI adoption speed beating the internet’s own record. Muse suggests that pattern now applies to consumer AI agents specifically, not just enterprise tools.

Meta Is Turning Its Muse AI Agent Into a Platform, Not Just an App

The bigger news from Connect wasn’t the download numbers — it was how far Meta plans to push Muse beyond a chat window. Announcements from the keynote included:

• A digital avatar named Jolly. Users will soon be able to conjure a face, body, and voice for their Muse agent and video chat with it in real time, powered by a new model called Muse Realtime Avatar.
• Mac control. Muse is coming to desktop, letting the agent operate apps on your computer and complete multi-step tasks while you walk away — similar to the computer-use capabilities already shipping from OpenAI and Anthropic, a trend this site broke down in AI browser agents: what they actually do now.
• Its own email address. Muse will soon be reachable by email directly, so you can forward messages to it or loop it into a thread.
• Shopping integrations. Meta struck partnerships with Shopify, Stripe, PayPal, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Walmart, Wayfair, Expedia, and soon Instacart, letting Muse buy things on your behalf using Shop Pay.
• A developer connector program. Meta opened up the platform for third-party “connectors” and says it received more than 1,500 applications in under a week.

Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, described the Mac feature bluntly at the keynote: “You can walk away from your computer and it keeps working for you on all the jobs you lined up.” Zuckerberg, for his part, called Muse “the personal superintelligence that billions of people around the world are going to use to accomplish their goals” — and confirmed Meta’s business model is a small fee on transactions Muse completes for users, not a subscription.

Muse Gets a Body: A Wearable Charm and Camera-Free Glasses

Meta also gave Muse physical form. The Muse Charm is a palm-sized, keychain-clippable device with a tiny screen showing Muse’s avatar — tap the fingerprint sensor and start talking without unlocking a phone. It has an unmistakable Tamagotchi feel, though the more accurate comparison may be the Apple Watch charms Gen Z has been repurposing on TikTok: small, wearable, always-on companions rather than nostalgia toys.

Alongside the Charm, Meta unveiled the Ray-Ban Meta Audio — its first camera-free AI glasses, priced at $349. Dropping the camera is a direct response to backlash over earlier AI glasses being used to record people without consent; the audio-only version still lets you talk to Muse, take calls, translate speech, and get music, just without the privacy controversy attached.

Whether the hardware becomes a hit or joins the pile of failed AI gadgets like Humane’s AI Pin or the Rabbit R1 is an open question — reactions to the Charm so far have been mixed, and Meta’s long privacy track record gives plenty of people a reason to hesitate before wearing its AI everywhere they go.

What to Watch Next

The Meta Muse AI agent is moving fast, and the strategy is clear: be the AI agent that’s everywhere a person already is — in their pocket, on their wrist, on their face, and on their Mac. If Meta’s connector program keeps growing at the pace it’s shown in its first week, expect Muse to start showing up as a checkout option or automated assistant on far more of the apps and sites you already use, not just Meta’s own family of products. For now, the numbers say people are trying it. Whether they keep using it once the novelty fades is the real test — and one worth watching over the next few months as Meta rolls the avatar, Mac support, and glasses integration out more broadly.