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The social media conglomerate may not be as synonymous with the generative AI revolution as OpenAI, Microsoft, or Google, but the firm’s AI research lab boasts some of the world's top deep learning talent and its pioneering work on large language models has played a key role behind the scenes in Meta's own products, from helping to moderate content on Facebook to helping to match advertising recommendations with users on Instagram. Now the company is also playing a critical role in the open-source generative AI world, releasing LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI), an open-source language model meant to match many of the capabilities of OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard, for free. Five months later, Meta released open-source Llama 2 with Microsoft, free of charge for commercial use or research. Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta, is a preeminent AI researcher and one of the “godfathers of AI.” He's been increasingly vocal in arguing against heavy-handed AI regulation, especially rules that might make it harder for open-souce AI. He has also emerged as a leading critic of the idea that AI could pose an existential risk to humanity, a position that has pitted him against his fellow deep learning godfathers, Geoff Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. In June, Meta announced Voicebox, a generative AI voice model that can produce high-quality text-to-speech with audio samples as short as two seconds long, among other services. Most recently, Meta announced Habitat 3.0, a simulator for AI models that it hopes to use to train socially intelligent AI assistants in the form of physical robots. It has also launched a number of AI chatbots with distinct communication styles licensed from celebrities from Paris Hilton to Snoop Dogg.

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Emma Burleigh

The Gen Z CEO of Lean In says the ‘broken rung’ is one of the most pervasive issues women face in their careers

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Emily Forlini

Meta’s Muse models reach the AI frontier—and kill any hopes to ‘pace’ it

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Mark Zuckerberg gets the last laugh as ‘The Social Reckoning’ flops—opening to a fraction of what ‘The Social Network’ made 16 years ago

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https://fortune.com/2026/10/13/metas-muse-models-reach-the-ai-frontier-and-kill-any-hopes-to-pace-it/?itm_source=parsely-api

AI ‘godfather’ Yann LeCun has ‘zero concerns’ about human extinction, says Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is ‘deluded’

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Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

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Nino Paoli

Self-made billionaire college dropout Alexandr Wang signs $14.3 billion deal to bolster Meta’s AI efforts: ‘There’s a huge premium to naivete’

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A Clippy marketing moment with Muse: ‘Meta has given AI a cute face’

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OpenAI has released hundreds of AI-generated mathematical proofs, sparking debate over the future of mathematics. Recursive CEO Richard Socher discusses his new book, The Eureka Machine, and why he believes the probability of AI wiping out humanity “is zero.” And Aaron Sorkin’s new film, The Social Reckoning, raises fresh questions about Meta, AI accountability, and big tech regulation. Fortune AI Editor Jeremy Kahn and Senior AI Reporter Beatrice Nolan break down the biggest stories in artificial intelligence.

OpenAI Just Published 370 Math Proofs. Here's Why Math May Never Be the Same | Fortune AI Weekly

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The era of personal AI agents is officially here. Meta has launched its new assistant app, Muse, designed to manage your schedule and do your shopping, while OpenAI has rolled out Dots to automate everyday tasks. But having an AI clear your to-do list comes with unprecedented access: your emails, calendar, and credit card details.
Senior AI Reporter Emily Forlini joins the show to unpack the enormous data and financial stakes behind this shift, as well as OpenAI's new "mission interview" screening process for prospective hires. Plus, Fortune Brainstorm Editorial Director Andrew Nusca discusses Norway’s proposed ban on Meta smart glasses in public spaces and what it signals for the future of wearable tech and privacy.
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In this episode:
00:00 – The Rise of Personal AI Agents
10:16 – OpenAI’s "Mission Interviews"
15:40 – Meta Smart Glasses Face a Ban in Norway


The Rise of AI Agents: Meta vs. OpenAI | Fortune Daily

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Meta and OpenAI want more access to your data, but don't worry, it's cute and fuzzy. Hello, I'm Kristen Stoller in for Ellie Austin, who is on the road today. The rise of the personal AI agent is upon us. Your to do list can get tackled by an agent, but at what cost? Meta's new app Muse books your appointments and does your shopping, and OpenAI answered with its own agent. Now invasive things come in cute packaging. These little helpers need access to your email, calendar, and credit card to function. Now enormous troves of data and dollars are at stake, and it's only the beginning. Senior AI reporter Emily Forlini joins us with the full story from New York. This is Fortune Daily. Emily, thank you so much for joining me. Of course, so it seems like personal AI agents are here and they are everywhere. They are flooding the New York City subway ads. They are at the top of the app store and they're blocked in some countries, but talk to me, uh, about them. Can you explain what a person. Agent is and what it can offer people. Yes, this is a huge new wave of AI and even though everybody's not using them yet, the thought is a lot of us will be. So it's a shift from chatbots and generating text and images to actually performing actions for you. So Meta launched its Muse assistant, I guess you can call it. They're very cute little animated humanoid little things on your desktop you name name them. Um, OpenAI has dots, which is very similar. So basically they can rove around your computer for you, browse the web, they can compose emails for you, they can even make purchases. So it's performing actions, um, rather than just that typical chat interface of chat GPT. OK, so very different than what a chat GPT can do for you. That is. So I think you know what is the most interesting to me about this is that this requires a lot of trust from consumers. There's a lot of um really personal data you have to give to these companies your credit card, your, your logins. Why do you think people are so willing to give this over, especially when you know companies like. Meta OpenAI have faced a lot of privacy concerns. Yes, both Meta and OpenAI have big consumer trust issues. I mean, Meta going back for years and OpenAI more recently with all of the hacking incidents. So you're right, it's a, it's a contradiction. We talk so much about how we can't trust these systems and then people are quietly adopting it and really excited about it. So I think it's just productivity. It's also kind of an early adopter set. People want to see what this new tech can do. Um, and so it's, it's an ongoing experiment, but the people so far who are using them say that they're just smashing work for them. Like it's getting through their whole to do list. Um, I tried to download one, but I, I was afraid because of the data thing, and so I didn't do it on my personal laptop. I tried to do it on our work laptops. Because I was like, I bet I absolutely I got blocked away. I got blocked from everything. So, um, yeah, I'm in the camp where I'm, I'm hesitant as well. Interesting. OK, so you would you use it in the future, you think if we got IT to unblock it, how would you want to use it? Well, it's hard because the biggest thing I have is like we're journalists. I talk to so many people per day and sometimes it's overwhelming. I get texts on regular text, Signal, WhatsApp. I have emails. I have calls, and I would love a personal assistant to basically streamline all that, make sure I respond to everybody in a timely manner. I can figure out my calendar, book meetings, like share open time slots, all that stuff. Um, but that would require giving email access and then it's like, what if it sends an email I don't like or what if it, you know what I mean, it's, it's tricky. So I haven't, I haven't decided what I think. Is there a safeguard if it does something on your behalf and, you know, spends X amount of money, buys a sweater or sends an email you don't like? Who's responsible? What happens? And you are responsible for sure, um, so I have heard people saying, you know, it, I'll ask it to respond to my emails but not send them so kind of draft something and serve it up to me and you can kind of, you know, approve or, or edit and things like that, um, but there have been some, some fails like people at the chatbot or I guess we'll call it a muse bot. What do we call it? I don't know, an assistant or a dot, their muse or their dot, whatever they've named it, um, will purchase something and they say, oh no, actually I don't. That and they say, oh well, actually too late, it's already in shipping status, you know, you have to deal with that. So that's a big headache. Do we know what Muse and Meta and OpenAiring Dots are doing with all of this personal data that it's collecting? They're using it to make these decisions um so in the world of AI it's the term has shifted a little bit from data to context so context is like data on steroids so it's not just maybe what you're putting in your email or you know entering on a web page or the cookies that are collected, it's everything so we give these assistants access to your PC so it's like what files are on your desktop, what tab you were just browsing, and how that might be influencing what you're emailing about. Um, in a future world, it's OK, maybe you're talking about something on the computer, but then your mom calls and the way you talk to your mom about that subject is very different from what you're doing on the computer. So that might influence your decision. So the AI wants to know absolutely everything that is happening. To help make smart decisions that you would make yourself with all of that context. So that's kind of the new word. It's, it's different than data in the sense that it is so all encompassing. And what is the difference between dots and muse? Do they do the same thing? Are there any differences there? So they, they appear very similar. Like I said, they're kind of cutesy, humanlike, anthropomorphic. Um, I made a dot with open AI. OK, what does yours look like? You have to share with us. It's super weird. It's like it's kind of like an alien looking thing with sunglasses, and I named it Tina. I don't know. I felt inspired, um, but Muse, you can also name it and pick the shape and stuff. But, uh, the big difference is that Muse has a free tier. So a lot of people are using it, so it's kind of more consumer oriented in that way. And dots from OpenAI, uh, you have to have at least a $100 per month subscription. And what does that get you, the subscription? More usage, access to things like new features like dots. Um, so I do not pay for that subscription. I did get it for free from OpenAI. Full disclosure, I would not pay $100 a month for an AI at this point, but yeah, so it's kind of geared towards different audiences there, um, but. Both have very similar promises of of performing smart actions on your behalf. There's clearly some kind of like marketing play here by making them so cute, so fuzzy, so alien like like yours. What do you think this design choice says about, you know, how they want users to engage? Yeah, I mean it kind of goes back to like Microsoft Clippy. It's very similar. It's like a more powerful version of Clippy, a much more powerful version. So I think it's trying to make people, um. Comfortable like with all of the, the hacking and the concerns about AI, people can develop relationships with these assistants and ultimately that fuels more usage, more comfort, um, inspires people, I think, to give over more of that context and that data so they, they see it almost as a coworker or a person. And then my theory on why OpenAI called it dots is because I think they're gonna have multiple dots and then they're gonna connect the dots. And it's going to be a ring of assistants so you can maybe refer to them by their names and it's a way to differentiate. So Emily, I'm curious because I feel like weeks ago we were at the point of like, is AI going to cure cancer or is it going to kill us all? But now I think that's kind of been forgotten and we've gone to like let me download this very cute fuzzy thing. What happened in between? You're right, it's a huge shift, but I do think there are still a lot of concerns about AI safety. So it speaks to everyone's holding all these emotions about AI, so we're scared about it, but we're also interested in it. We don't want to get left behind. You want to try the new technology. This is a fun consumer product, especially in the case of Metas Muse. So I think they exist together, which is why some of the messages about AI are so mixed. And and confusing. And then my other question for you on on Amazon because Amazon blocked Meta's news right away. Can you talk to us about that and what's going on there? Yeah, that was huge news. Um, it speaks to some of the conflict that this huge new wave of technology is basically wreaking havoc on the web, and the biggest retailer said no, we won't allow people to use them, so that's very big. And a lot of reasons, uh, so it violated the terms of service, um, hesitation around people making purchases on Amazon through their assistance. And then um Amazon not having control over that shopping experience is really big. Now, talk me through where this goes over the next, let's say 5, 10 years. Should we expect, you know, Apple, Google, Elon Musk maybe to come up with their own form of these personal AI? Yeah, I think so. I mean, Elon Musk, you mentioned it, he's been talking about groups of agents collaborating. They've all been talking about this. So this is very much something that has been. Happening behind the scenes for years in my reporting and now what's big with Muse and Dots is now it's kind of reaching a mass audience. So this is very much a trend that's been bubbling for a long time and um we'll see if, if it becomes mainstream um from my perspective since I report on OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, like all the big. Kind of frontier labs, I'm not sure if you could call Meta a frontier lab, but Meta has struggled with AI for several years now. This is their first big hit. So really what this means for me in my reporting is, is Meta something to watch? Are they gonna become a bigger player, more serious player in AI? And that's kind of the conversation my sources are having now. Excellent. Look forward to seeing what's next. Thank you so much Emily and if you could stick around, I actually have one more question for you, um, kind of a selfish one about AI hiring an open AI in this process so you had a scoop that I thought was really interesting about open AI adding something called the the mission interview. Talk to us about what that is. Yeah, so, uh, it's a small scoop, but it's a big update and opening eyes recruiting process, and I have a feeling it will become a fixture in that process for many thousands of candidates to come. So basically it's uh one interview loop with somebody who. Who is outside the hiring team, so another employee, and they have a program that employees can can do to get certified to lead these interviews and with the name mission interview we assume that it's kind of testing if the candidate is on board with the mission and seeing how they'll contribute to the mission. So what is the mission? OpenAI says it's that AGI or artificial general intelligence will benefit all of humanity. So very lofty. But how do you answer that without sounding scripted? I don't know. I mean, I got the sense I'm not sure if there will be some of the same questions that they ask. I'm not sure if every interview will be the same. Uh, we do know that anthropic's version of this is very, uh, I'll say wacky. They ask questions like, you know, if the stock price went to zero, which. You still work here and they, you know, tell me about a moral quandary you had and how you handled it, handled it. So it's um very, uh, it's different. I mean this is kind of a common practice in, in tech though in this concept where you have someone from outside the hiring team who comes in and does. Basically like a cultural fit. It reminds me of um Amazon because, and I know you put this in your story too, but I in my Amazon story earlier this year, the leadership principles were such a focus and it's a little, little bit of a twist on that, but it feels very similar to yeah so I mean I worked at Amazon, so I went through that process and I, you know, had that interview was called the the bar. So someone from outside the hiring team who's trained to be a bar raiser comes in, sees if the new employee is going to raise the bar, like raise the quality of, of other people in that position, and they also ask questions about the leadership principles. Um, you don't know that they're asking about that, but they have a bank of questions for each principal, and they will give that to the interviewer. And so that's a little more structured than what I'm hearing about this mission interview, especially based on what Anthropic is doing. I think OpeningEyes will be different, but I don't know if it's backed by structure like leadership principles, which there are a fixed number that kind of inspire the questions. So I'm not sure. I think OpeningEye is very much figuring out what it'll look like. It's a pilot now. It's only been rolled out to 2 teams. So we'll see, and you wrote that they are welcoming, you know, disagreement debate. Does that seem genuine to you given all that they're going through right now with the with is AI good for humanity, right? So with this, I mean, there's open is going through a lot right now in terms of its public perception. And so I think they're trying to scrutinize candidates and make sure that they, they're there for the right reasons and that they'll contribute in responsible ways. So they did talk to me about how they want it to be there's. Intellectual diversity and debate, but they also use an interesting word which is how candidates evaluate trade-offs, and that's a big thing with AI. So again, it could harm humanity like we talked about, or it could be very helpful just like with Muse and dots. It's like both those things, so. How do you trade off the impact of the technology, um, and so they use that word which I thought was very telling. Yeah, I also think it's interesting that you have all these people competing for pretty much the highest salaries you can get right now. You reported that they're offering a mid-career engineer a job that was $935,000 salary. Crazy. How, and you, you mentioned the word trade-off, which makes me think like if I'm trying to get a nearly a million dollars salary. Uh, you know, how genuine am I gonna be in my response? I just want that job. I want that money, right? And there are more people. I mean, I had somebody who told me that researchers, researchers out of college are making 2 to $4 million. Like a former OpenAI employee told me that we're in the wrong business. We're in the wrong business. I mean, they work all day and all night and they have really high stakes. I mean, the experiments that they run at work cost millions or billions of dollars when they're, they're using the compute infrastructure. So the whole thing is huge. High dollar value. This is just my personal opinion. I don't think you can separate that, um, you know, of course it's still a job, so you're at a job to make money, and that's a huge factor. Um, and as our, you know, future of work reporter here, I do have to ask you, do you think that this mission interview is coming for the rest of corporate America? Are other people outside of tech gonna be seeing this? I don't know about the mission part because AI companies are very into that word mission and big words like humanity and AGI, but I think OpenAI is actually a little bit late to this concept. Like we talked about Amazon's had this for years, Anthropic already has one. A lot of companies have a kind of cultural fit interview, so. Opening eye here is late and they're actually doing it, I think, as a function of the company getting bigger so they're not a small lab anymore where everyone knows each other. They have 830 open roles right now. They're growing like crazy and so I think what these interviews do is provide a control mechanism and a consistency with how they evaluate candidates as they get bigger. Thanks, Emily. For more stories about hiring in the future of work, check out my newsletter, the Fortune Workplace Innovation newsletter, every Monday. Up next, Brainstorm editorial director Andrew Nesca takes us through Norway's ban on smart glasses. There's a new AI policy change happening right before your eyes. Literally, the government in Norway is proposing a temporary ban on AI glasses. AI glasses look just like regular glasses. Meta and Esselor Luxottica, the company that owns Ray-Ban and Oakley, they've done a big deal and now they have cameras inside regular looking frames. Where the AI comes in is that it adds that layer of intelligence on what it can see and hear. So Instead of just recording and processing these things, it's analyzing them. It can tell you who you're looking at or what the temperature might be. It's tough to find a person who isn't concerned about AI glasses. Glasses go with you everywhere. They go with you to the gym. They go with you to school. They go with you to the doctor's office, and these are places that perhaps we are not used to freely recording. And there absolutely have been problems with this. I mean, look, you can see a person holding a smartphone. Glasses are quite a different story. If someone is wearing a functional pair of AI glasses and recording you, there is a little light next to the lens just like on your smartphone or your computer monitor. But of course the big concern is people tamper with those. Now Norway's proposed ban is not a Blanket ban it only is to take place in certain environments schools, doctors' offices, sensitive areas where we really, really don't want recording without consent. Norway's government says it plans to propose the bill as soon as possible. Um, if that comes to pass, just like many other countries, Norway's parliament will vote on it and then the king will sign it into law. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Kristin Stoller. Remember to like and subscribe, and I'll see you next time. Guys, this is so fun. Thanks for the best Wednesday ever.

In this episode of Fortune Daily, Executive Editor Jim Edwards reveals the scale of Temu’s “AI-slop” problem, with research estimating nearly $1 billion spent on ads featuring likely fake creators and influencers. We also dive into Shein’s rocky IPO as shares slide below their offer price. Plus, Tech Correspondent Sebastian Herrera takes us inside the new John Ternus era at Apple, and Business Editor Nick Lichtenberg explores why Gen Z is trading tech for blue-collar work with a social media twist.
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Temu’s Fake AI Influencer Problem Exposed

On today's episode of Fortune Daily: Bill Gates shares a new, urgent essay detailing the looming threats AI poses to society. Plus, we dive into the landmark Meta settlement — what it means for teens on Facebook and Instagram and how other social media apps may follow suit with Fortune News Editor Catherina Gioino. Next, Senior Fortune Reporter Eleanor Pringle breaks down the U.S. bond market in Bull/Bear/Base Case. And we go inside Bill Ackman’s brain research institute and discuss whether we’re entering a new golden age of philanthropy with Fortune’s Finance and Crypto Editor, Jeff John Roberts.

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The Gen Z CEO of Lean In says the ‘broken rung’ is one of the most pervasive issues women face in their careers

Meta’s Muse models reach the AI frontier—and kill any hopes to ‘pace’ it

Mark Zuckerberg gets the last laugh as ‘The Social Reckoning’ flops—opening to a fraction of what ‘The Social Network’ made 16 years ago

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