Meta Bets a Tamagotchi-Style Device Can Sell Personal AI

Meta wants its artificial intelligence agent, Muse, with people all day.

At Meta Connect Wednesday (Sept. 23) and in a blog post the same day, the company announced that it’s putting the AI agent with its glasses and shopping partners. Then Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed a Tamagotchi-like device. Muse Charm is a pocket gadget a person taps and talks to, and it runs nothing but Muse.

Muse Charm works “without having to unlock a phone or open an app,” Zuckerberg said, per a Thursday PYMNTS report.

Meta has only built a few prototypes of the device, but the company plans to finalize it and ship units in time for the holidays. There is no price yet.

Muse Charm has a 2-inch touchscreen, a fingerprint sensor and a 5G modem, Reuters reported Thursday. It cannot make calls. The screen shows a cartoon Muse character, not apps. IDC Director Jitesh Ubrani said in the report that the device is for people who do not want to wear glasses or do not trust them.

The device came from the design lab run by Alan Dye, former Apple interface chief, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Meta initially planned a 2027 launch, but Zuckerberg pushed it to this year.

OpenAI’s first device, a similar pocket-sized gadget designed by Jony Ive, former chief design officer at Apple and a protégé of Steve Jobs, is projected to be out in 2027, PYMNTS reported in February.

A phone agent waits to be opened. A Tamagotchi-like agent is always on. That is Meta’s pitch with Muse Charm, and it only pays off if the agent is connected to the accounts that run a person’s life.

Who Hands Over the Keys

Meta said the keys are safe. Passwords and card numbers sit in a secure storage the model cannot read, Forbes reported Wednesday.

At the Connect event, Meta said Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Wayfair and more retailers are Muse shopping partners, according to the Wednesday blog post.

Consumers aren’t sold. Investment bank Oppenheimer & Co. surveyed 1,500 consumers in the United States about the Muse launch, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday (Sept. 18). Only 8% would trust Meta with their passwords, while 30% said they would trust Google, 23% said they would trust Apple and 16% said they would trust ChatGPT. Meanwhile, 17% would trust none.

Muse has limited use for shopping without that access. The survey came weeks after Meta agreed to a multistate settlement over social media harms reported at up to $18 billion.

The doubt runs wider than Meta. Visa found this month that 72% of U.S. consumers have used an AI assistant, but only 23% trust it to make a payment for them, PYMNTS reported Sept. 9.

Generation Z treats AI assistants as companions, not search tools, according to the Thursday Reuters report. Smart Analytics Global Founder Linda Sui said in the report that the device could catch on with them if it’s cheap and easy to use.

The people most willing to hand an AI agent their accounts are the youngest.

A Category With No Hits

Small AI gadgets have a history of fizzling. The Rabbit R1 launched in 2024 with buzz and flopped on unreliable features, Laptop Mag reported in December 2024.

Muse Charm will likely stay a niche product unless it does something a phone, watch or glasses cannot.

Meta is the first big platform to ship a device built for an agent. OpenAI has spent billions of dollars on hardware and has not revealed anything yet. Until this week, Meta’s own answer was glasses. Muse Charm is a bet that people want the agent even without the frames.

Meta said more details, including price, will come before the December ship date.

Also announced at Meta Connect, per the Wednesday blog post:

• Ray-Ban Meta Audio, Meta’s first glasses without a camera, have open-ear speakers and up to 12 hours of battery. The price starts at $349, and the glasses will ship Oct. 13.
• Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3) have slimmer frames, up to 9 hours of battery and an action button. The price starts at $449, up from $379 for Gen 2, and the glasses are on sale now.
• Meta VR Glasses are a VR headset shaped like glasses. They cost $1,299 and will be available in spring 2027.
• The $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses expanded to five more countries and are also available online.

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