Meta launches Muse Wonder AI model to rival ChatGPT and Claude
Meta released a new artificial intelligence model on Monday called Muse Wonder, claiming it matches OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude on tasks such as coding and working through financial or legal questions.
Meta AI Chief Alexandr Wang said the model belongs at the frontier of AI development. "These are true frontier models. We really think they are competitive with the best models out there, and particularly state of the art on personal and professional agentic work," Wang told Bloomberg on Monday. For skeptics, he added, "I would tell folks they should try it out and judge for themselves."
The company said Muse Wonder, known internally as "Watermelon," is a major step forward from its earlier models. Meta positioned the announcement as proof of a turnaround after its models drew a weak reception in Silicon Valley last year, according to Bloomberg. Whether outside testing bears out those claims remains to be seen — evaluating AI models is inherently tricky, since benchmark results can be engineered to look favorable and often diverge from how a model actually behaves in practice, according to Bloomberg.
Wang said Meta has sought to distinguish itself from competitors by targeting broad consumer use cases rather than narrowly focusing on coding. "I think the rest of the ecosystem has been really focused on coding agents," he said, according to Bloomberg. "We do genuinely think that we've taken a differentiated focus to make the personal-agent use case really sing."
For now, Muse Wonder is available to developers through the Meta Model API and Muse Code. The company said the model will soon power the subscription version of its Muse personal AI agent app.
The launch follows a 14-month push by Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to overhaul the company's AI organization. That effort included committing hundreds of billions of dollars to infrastructure and bringing Wang on board via a $14 billion deal with Scale AI to head the new AI unit, according to Bloomberg.
Meta launched the Muse personal AI agent on September 8, and the app reached 5 million downloads in 22 days — faster than ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Muse is capable of sending emails, booking travel, filling out forms, and making purchases on a user's behalf. It is free for most uses, with subscription tiers at $20 and $100 per month. Last month, Meta also expanded Muse with tools aimed at small business owners, connecting the agent to third-party platforms including Canva, Asana, Zoom, and Salesforce's Slack.