Meta says US users can now video chat with their Muse AI avatar

Meta said Thursday that Muse Voice, its feature for calling and video chatting with the consumer AI agent Muse, is now available to everyone in the United States. The rollout expands on the feature's debut at Meta's Connect developer conference in September, and it arrives through a blog post and a post on X from chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, who shared a demo of his own Muse in action.

Under the hood, Meta said the video chatting runs on new models: Muse Realtime Avatar and Muse Realtime Voice, which together power the digital avatar that speaks with the user. Competitors already ship voice chat with their agents, but Meta's version centers on a cute animated avatar, nicknamed Jolly, that users can restyle into a person, an animal, or another character entirely. Meta frames the anthropomorphism as a deliberate bet: making the agent look alive could make consumers feel more connected to it, and live conversations could deepen that bond. As the avatar talks, Meta says it deploys "subtle expressions and gestures" matched to the conversation's tone.

In Wang's demo, his Muse takes the form of a fluffy white dog. Wang joked about his habit of posting memes on X and told the agent he might have gotten in trouble with his boss over them; the Muse responded by suggesting he add disclaimers to memes that could be read as Meta endorsing something risque.

Availability spans mobile, web, and Mac today, with support planned later for Meta's AI Glasses and the forthcoming "Muse Charm" hardware. The timing matters: the video chat support lands just before Meta's plan to ship a Tamagotchi-like wearable for Muse before the end of the year, where the avatar will appear on a small screen and users will be able to talk to the agent, which can reply or carry out tasks on their behalf.

What to watch next is whether the avatar-first design translates into the retention Meta is banking on once the wearable reaches real users, and how well the realtime avatar and voice models hold up in extended conversations on phone and web before they spread to glasses and the Charm. Open questions also include how the Tamagotchi-style screen experience compares with video calls on a phone, and whether the promised task execution keeps pace with the conversational polish the demos showcase.