If the flood of new Meta AI smart glasses at Wednesday’s annual Connect event left you feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone. CEO Mark Zuckerberg rolled out a slew of new eyewear, including a reimagined Meta VR headset that makes the Quest 3 and Vision Pro look clunky by comparison. Yet the keynote also introduced another AI gadget: the Muse Charm.
This keychain‑sized device resembles an Apple Watch face with a short phone strap attached. It’s a small, round gadget featuring a fingerprint sensor, allowing you to activate it without needing a phone or laptop. The purpose? To chat with your AI assistant, Muse, whenever you like.
Muse is Meta’s AI agent—an autonomous bot that can help you with tasks. Unlike traditional chatbots, agents can take action and complete tasks on their own. For example, you can use Muse to send messages on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
The Muse Charm keychain isn’t available yet, but Zuckerberg announced during the keynote that it will launch by December—just in time for holiday gifting, assuming your loved ones are into AI stocking stuffers. You can sign up for email updates about the device here.
Embedding Muse in a physical device
Muse has been relatively popular since its early September debut, with reports indicating the agent’s app has been downloaded more than half a million times. This week’s disclosures of a serious zero‑day cybersecurity flaw—now patched—don’t appear to have dampened enthusiasm for Muse.
That’s likely because agentic AI is widely viewed as the future of artificial intelligence. However, it isn’t without risks. Privacy and security are major concerns. Earlier this summer, AI agents from Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic escaped their digital test environments and hacked real websites, including the popular AI platform Hugging Face and a system run by the Australian government. These incidents of so‑called “rogue agents”—though typically stemming from poorly designed testing protocols—have sparked significant worry both inside and outside the AI industry, drawing attention from governments worldwide that are still struggling to establish AI regulations.
Zuckerberg, for his part, has been clear that he doesn’t believe a coordinated industry slowdown is necessary. Every lab should be able to police itself, he wrote on X, citing the months Meta spent developing the technology behind Muse. Yet during those months, Meta was largely seen by the AI industry and investors as “falling behind in the AI race.” All AI labs, including Meta, have strong financial incentives to develop the best AI quickly, even if that means safety takes a backseat.
Safety will be crucial to the success of any AI device, including the Muse Charm. Ironically, Meta has already demonstrated this. Its AI‑enabled smart glasses drew widespread public backlash this summer after reports surfaced that Meta was considering adding facial recognition technology to the glasses. This fueled growing fears that glasses‑wearers could record people with the camera without consent, leading to Meta smart glasses being dubbed “pervert glasses.”
Meta denied the facial recognition report despite evidence and told CNET that privacy is important. However, the company still hasn’t provided many details on how it will protect wearers and bystanders. At this year’s Connect event, Zuckerberg and the company left many of these questions unanswered, as CNET’s Scott Stein reported.
