With Meta’s Muse Charm, AI enters its kawaii era

The useful part

AI has an image problem, to say the least, with public fears on the rise that the technology could lead to mass unemployment and human extinction. So for its new AI agent Muse and an associated device, Meta is dialing down the fear factor and cranking up the cute. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company's forthcoming Muse Charm on Wednesday, a handheld device for its new AI agent.

How it works

• It looks like a futuristic Tamagotchi and personifies the chatbot on the screen as a fuzzy, rotund beige mascot.
• Instead of visualizing its new AI agent as non-anthropromorphic glowing orb, like Siri, or a cursor and text, like ChatGPT, Muse is a cute monster avatar.

Details worth keeping

To sell AI hardware to the masses, Meta is going kawaii. Meta could have gone down the route of its competitors, but it didn't.