People using Meta’s new Muse app can ask it to handle jobs such as sending emails, booking travel and making purchases. The personal artificial intelligence agent has quickly reached the top of Apple’s US free iPhone app chart, giving Meta an early advantage in a crowded consumer AI market.
Meta launched Muse on 8 September. By 18 September, it had reached No. 1 on Apple’s U.S. App Store, displacing OpenAI’s ChatGPT from first place. Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang confirmed the milestone in a post on X on Friday.
Muse recorded more than 730,000 U.S. downloads over its first ten days. That works out at roughly 73,000 U.S. downloads a day over its first 10 days. ChatGPT had 697,000 U.S. downloads in its first eight days in 2023, when it averaged 87,000 downloads a day.
The comparison points to strong early demand for Muse, although its daily average remains below ChatGPT’s initial rate. The ranking also captures a limited measure of the market: one chart, in one country, on one operating system. It does not show whether users will keep returning to Muse or take up its paid subscriptions.
Muse is available in the U.S. on iOS, Android, Meta’s WhatsApp messaging service and the web. The service is free to start, with paid tiers priced at $20 and $100 a month. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced a Mac version on 17 September. That version can be downloaded from the web and does not count towards the App Store ranking.
On Apple’s free iPhone chart, Muse is ahead of ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude and Meta-owned Instagram. Gemini ranks No. 8, Claude is No. 13, SpaceXAI’s Grok is No. 32 and Microsoft Copilot is No. 64.
The app’s rise comes as Apple introduces its own AI agent features through Siri AI, which is integrated across the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch in Apple’s new OS 27 software releases. Apple says the new Siri can take system actions including editing photos, and can use material displayed on a screen as context.
That system-level integration gives Apple a different route into the market from standalone applications such as Muse. It remains unclear how Apple’s Siri capabilities will affect use of third-party AI agents over time, or whether Muse can maintain its position at the top of the chart.
There are also open questions around the paid service. Meta has yet to show how many users will move from the free tier to subscriptions at $20 or $100 a month. Comparative data on task completion and user satisfaction between Muse and ChatGPT has also not been provided.
JPMorgan upgraded Meta from Neutral to Overweight and raised its price target on the stock from $640 to $820. The early chart result gives Meta a visible consumer foothold, though the durability of Muse’s demand will depend on use beyond its initial downloads.
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