Meta is banking its future on its Muse AI agent — and winning user trust

Meta ( META ) CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out his vision for the company's future during its Meta Connect conference on Wednesday, and it's all about Muse .

The social media giant's new AI agent has quickly jumped to the top of both Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store, and, according to Zuckerberg, millions of people are using it.

During Connect, Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang demonstrated a number of use cases for Muse, ranging from the mundane, like scheduling meetings, to more impressive feats like negotiating better rates for cable service and making purchases across multiple services.

Meta is also bringing Muse to its next-generation Meta VR Glasses , allowing you to speak to a digital avatar of your agent, as well as to its Muse Charm. A handheld, purpose-built device, the Muse Charm lets you interact with your Muse agent without a smartphone or smart glasses.

The company said it will make money from Muse by taking a small cut on transactions made via the agent.

"We struggle over the big details and the small ones. It's not always easy. Sometimes, whole years are hard, but we build because this is who we are. And the centerpiece of our vision for what we're building is Muse," Zuckerberg said during his keynote.

"I expect that Muse is going to grow into the personal super intelligence that billions of people around the world are going to use to accomplish their goals and improve their lives," he said.

On the Pressure Points podcast, Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster explained that Meta's push into the AI agent space will have major implications for its business, such as reducing its reliance on algorithms that serve up content based on a user's past browsing habits.

"This, to me, is … a huge deal when it comes to how they're presenting the technology and how they're going to drive adoption," Munster said regarding the shift toward Muse versus the prior influence-dominated social media space.

But if Meta is going to win over users beyond early adopters and AI boosters, it will need to convince people that it takes privacy and security seriously.

The company clearly recognizes that. A portion of the Connect keynote was dedicated to explaining how Meta secures user data.

"We designed state-of-the-art privacy and security into all these systems from the beginning," Zuckerberg said.

"We built the Muse Secure VM to keep your information on your own secure virtual machine, and soon we are also going to release the Muse Confidential VM so that even Meta won't be able to see that information," he added.