Meta has been working on AI for years. It even acquired Manus late last year, only for China to order the deal unwound in April. And while Meta AI might have the downloads, it isn't a household name like ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok.
Well, that changed last week with the release of Muse, an AI worker that goes beyond a simple AI chatbot and can do things for you without constantly chatting - much like Grok Bot from X. Meta says Muse can keep working after you close the app and come back when it needs approval.
Muse is taking off in a big way! The app spent most of last week near the top of both US charts. On Saturday, it reached #1 on the App Store, displacing ChatGPT. Google Play followed on Sunday.
Muse is now #1 in both stores.
Appfigures Intelligence shows Muse made its way into 1.1M devices through Friday, almost entirely in the US (and Canada, but it's tiny) and mostly through the App Store. Downloads from Google Play are rising.
AI workers feel like the natural evolution of AI this year, especially after OpenClaw made agentic AI easier to understand and experiment with. Now Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI are all pushing toward workers that do more and chat less. Workers may not be as popular yet, but I expect their popularity to rise and eventually overtake chatbots as the role of the assistant becomes more doing and less talking.
Here's the thing though, Meta can drive downloads pretty easily because it controls what is effectively an infinite ad network. Those downloads aren't necessarily real demand but rather curiosity. And curiosity may not translate into real usage. So Muse's million downloads may not be the same as Grok Bot's million downloads.
Using revenue as a proxy, curiosity hasn't turned into usage just yet... Grok Bot earned $175K in its first 11 days while Muse earned $27K after fees over the same launch window, according to our estimates.
It's too early to judge so I won't, but the next few months will be interesting for AI workers, especially as Anthropic and OpenAI push more on that.
Grok and X reached a record revenue high in August, and the new Grok Bot has already crossed .
TikTok and ChatGPT continued their tenure as the leaders in revenue and downloads, respectively, in August, but that could be changing before the year ends.