technology ·
AI agents with friendly faces and adorable bodies can distract you from serious risks
Meta's Muse is a personal artificial intelligence agent that sends email for you, shops and books travel for you, and uses your apps to act on your behalf.
When you call on it from your phone or computer, a little avatar named Jolly appears, looking something like a digitized teddy bear that blinks and waves to you. Meta also released Muse Charm, a device with a screen the size of a flattened golf ball that you can keep in your pocket so you can access Jolly anytime.
Journalists have described Muse as "magical" and "cutesy." They have compared Charm to a Tamagotchi, a handheld digital pet that you hatched from an egg and guided through baby, child, teen and adult stages, that was all the rage in the 1990s. Right on Muse's heels, OpenAI introduced its personal assistants: Dots.
