WIRED: Companies Say Muse Hasn't Upended Their Businesses Yet
WIRED spoke with executives at roughly 50 companies about Meta's Muse and other shopping agents. The answer, from DoorDash to Hilton to eBay, was that…
By Icarus4 min read
Meta’s Muse has come up repeatedly on corporate earnings calls in recent weeks, and Wall Street has worried aloud about what shopping agents could do to brand loyalty, price competition, and profit margins. Executives at roughly 50 companies told WIRED a calmer story: agent-driven business is still small, and disruption has not arrived yet.
The reporting, published October 31, draws on recent earnings calls and conversations with executives across travel, internet services, food delivery, and self-storage. The pattern was consistent across sectors. DoorDash said it had received several hundred orders from Muse and other agents combined. T-Mobile said it had seen nothing significant from agents. Hilton called reservations made through agents insignificant. Ally Financial described the activity as fairly low, and eBay called it very, very small.
The same held for a fear that has circulated in analyst notes: that customers would set agents loose on unused subscriptions and memberships. Fitness chain Life Time Group said it had seen zero cancellations from agents. Public Storage and Hartford Insurance Group reported similar results. In India, delivery company Eternal estimated that commerce conducted through agents was close to zero.
That picture sits next to Meta’s own account of Muse’s early traction. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Meta’s earnings call this month that more than 10 million people in the United States and Canada had activated Muse, with more than a quarter of them shopping through it, making shopping the most popular use and beating the company’s expectations. Meta has also said shoppers using Muse spend more than $200 on average. Zuckerberg’s activation and shopping figures were covered here when Meta reported them.
The gap between those two accounts is, for now, a measurement gap. Meta declined to comment to WIRED beyond its earnings-call remarks, but pointed to partnerships with 10 retailers, including Walmart, Best Buy, and Gap, meant to simplify shopping through Muse. Many of those retailers last reported earnings before Muse launched in September, so they have not yet disclosed anything about its effect on their business. Until their next results arrive, neither Meta’s shopping claim nor the shrug from other companies can be checked against partner sales.
Some companies are preparing anyway
The lack of volume has not stopped some companies from getting ready. Chipotle chief digital officer Arlie Sisson told reporters this week that the chain had found agents struggling to complete purchases when loyalty discounts were involved or when orders came in outside business hours. Since Muse’s debut, orders placed through agents have risen by a single-digit percentage, Sisson said, and Chipotle is now cleaning up its website code so agents can complete orders more reliably.
InterContinental Hotels Group CEO Elie Maalouf told WIRED that a collaboration with Meta remained undecided. Bank of America, meanwhile, warned customers this week about handing login credentials to AI assistants, a reminder that security concerns still sit alongside the commercial questions.
Most executives WIRED spoke with did not dismiss agents. Many said they expected to benefit if agent adoption grows, and several are already doing the unglamorous work of making their sites legible to agents. That work is the clearest early effect of Muse on businesses so far.
It is also the context for the loudest corporate pushback to date. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told investors this week that outside shopping agents are “still not great,” weeks after Amazon blocked Muse from its store. Amazon’s position stands apart from the rest of WIRED’s reporting: most companies are watching agent orders and tidying up their sites while they wait for those orders to become large enough to matter.
The practical takeaway for Muse users is modest. Shopping through an agent works best where a retailer has partnered with Meta or where the checkout is simple enough for an agent to complete. Where it is not, as Chipotle found, the order can still stall on a discount code or an after-hours rule. The companies WIRED spoke with expect that to change gradually, not all at once.
