Meta's new artificial intelligence agent Muse promises to make everything from booking appointments to building playlists easier, but its rollout of agentic shopping, in particular, has the tech and retail realms buzzing.
Shopping has quickly become one of Muse's biggest usage drivers, a Meta spokesperson said.
After an initial setup, shopping is as easy as asking your Muse agent to find an item you are interested in. You can be as specific as you want about brands, price and availability.
The agent will browse retail sites to scan for items that fit your request, then offer suggested listings within the Muse app and website. Clicking a listing will either open straight to the retail website or open within the Muse app, which will feature a button to check out with your agent.
If you choose to check out with Muse, it will prep the checkout for you and show you an "approval card" with order details for you to confirm. If you haven't given Muse access to your email, full name and address, it will need that as well. For payment, Muse can check out with Meta's tech payment partners like Link by Stripe or Shopify Shop Pay, which you have to connect to.
Link "generates a one-time-use card so your real card details stay hidden," according to Meta.
PayPal has also been announced as a Muse payment provider, but isn't available yet.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at Meta Connect that the company will take a small fee on transactions.
Muse 'Connectors'
Meta announced a slate of partnerships on Sept. 23 that will offer what the app called an "official fast lane" for the Muse agent platform, though not all of the so-called "connectors" are active yet.
Walmart, Gap, Sephora, Expedia, Wayfair, Best Buy and more were included in the announcement, and the company said more are in the works.
Ticketmaster, which was included in the partnerships already announced, directs users to its own marketplace for payment.
"Fans remain in complete control of their purchase decisions, as final purchases are all made within Ticketmaster's secure marketplace," a spokesperson for the company told CNBC.
E-commerce shopping giant Amazon has blocked Muse from purchasing products on its site, saying it violates the retailer's terms of service. Amazon alleged that Muse stores customer credentials and scrapes account data, among other issues.
Luca Cian, a professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business specializing in psychological responses to AI, said the funneling of shopping into a singular agentic shopping experience stands to intensify competition between shopping giants that are already competing for the same marketplace.
"The real fight over Muse is between companies, and the consumer is the prize," Cian told CNBC. "Whoever owns the agent owns the relationship with the shopper, and every retailer knows it."
Data and privacy concerns
The use of AI in several types of pricing practices has broadly fueled some distrust among shoppers.
Morning Consult found that 59% of U.S. adults said price-gouging was a "major concern" with AI-driven dynamic pricing in a January survey.
Retail and e-commerce companies are increasingly using AI to gather customer data and introduce dynamic or personalized pricing, according to the Bank of England.
McDonald's is upping its use of AI in item pricing, and on the other side of the trend, Instacart ended tests of AI-driven pricing late last year amid pushback. Instacart is a Muse partner.
Walmart CEO John Furner penned an open letter last week seeking to reassure customers that the company does not use shoppers' personal information to implement dynamic pricing on its website or with its shopping tools. Furner acknowledged he's "heard concerns about companies using that information and technology to charge you more."
Outside of pricing questions, Meta has its own history of data and safety issues. The company has faced a wave of lawsuits about child safety and data security, most recently settling a major federal case involving a group of state attorneys general for nearly $17 billion.
Customer experience
Muse has soared to the top spot on the Apple App Store for iPhone free apps, and the Tamagotchi-like Charm device showcased by Zuckerberg has furthered the buzz around the agent platform.
Cian said that despite distrust of Meta, many will still use the app due to the step-by-step trust-building nature of the agent and because "people compartmentalize."
"Research shows that perceived control changes behavior. Muse is built around that lesson," Cian told CNBC. "Those are the right levers. Whether they hold up in practice is what people will be watching."
Cian said that despite potential safety concerns, consumers will likely be happy to offload various "chore" tasks to agents, though they still may want to shop for more personalized items themselves.
"Replenishment, price comparison, returns, waiting for a price drop: nobody feels diminished because a machine did that," Cian said.