First, it’s important to understand a key difference. A chatbot waits for a question and answers it. An agent takes the task and finishes it. Muse can book travel, send an email or negotiate a lower bill, Meta said in its launch announcement. It opens a browser and fills out forms on the user’s behalf. It keeps working after the user closes the app. It returns when it needs approval to send an email or make a purchase. It remembers details a user mentioned once and makes suggestions unprompted.
Instinct, another personal AI agent, reaches users by text message. There is no app to open. The startup still runs a waitlist, so its audience is far smaller than Meta’s. Signing up gives the agent broad authority. Instinct can read and store a copy of the data in any account a user connects, its terms state. It can also make purchases and accept agreements in the user’s name. Those commitments bind the user as if they had made them personally.
A Test Drive Shows Promise and Lag
In a PYMNTS test, Muse felt more personal than a chatbot. Asked to order toilet paper, it returned options to choose from. That took more than 5 minutes. It couldn’t shop Amazon or Walmart until the account credentials were shared through a secure link. Payment ran through Link, the Stripe checkout wallet.
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A TechRadar reviewer tested Muse on a low-stakes purchase of shorts. The agent asked his size and returned in a couple of minutes with options and a sale price. He then gave Muse permission to read his inbox and write on his behalf. It found an unopened notice from his power company about a solar panel inspection. He picked a visit date, and a drafted reply was waiting for his approval a minute later. Both tasks worked. Giving access was the hard part.
Instinct’s testers reported the same mix. Investor Katie Jacobs Stanton praised the product on X, then wrote that it sent an email without checking with her first. “One unauthorized action can reset that trust to zero,” she added. Another user, Claire Vo, wrote that she disconnected the agent from Google at 11 a.m. and got a summary of her email at 2 p.m. Indexed data stays in use after a disconnect unless the user requests deletion, Instinct’s terms state, and they link to a tool for that.
Checkout Decides Who Reaches the Shopper
An agent that shops needs a way to pay. Link has more than 300 million users, Stripe said in its announcement. At the one-million-plus businesses that accept Link, Muse checks out with the shopper’s saved payment method. Everywhere else, Link issues a single-use virtual card scoped to the approved purchase. The shopper approves the total in chat. Muse never sees the card. “Stripe is building the infrastructure that lets agents buy from businesses,” said Jay Shah, Stripe’s business lead for Link.
Instinct handles purchases differently. The user is the buyer and Instinct is not a party to the sale, the company’s terms state. Instinct’s total liability is capped at $100 or what the user paid for the product.
Shoppers are willing, with conditions. About 69% of consumers are interested in handing grocery shopping and subscription management to an agent, PYMNTS Intelligence found in a survey of 2,299 U.S. adults. Among interested consumers, 49% would let an agent complete both routine and larger purchases. Banks, digital wallets and card networks ranked as the most trusted providers of an agent.
Payments draw more caution. While 72% of consumers have used an AI assistant, only 23% of U.S. consumers trust generative AI to handle payments for them, PYMNTS reported.
The chatbot’s limit is that it stops at the answer. It can name the best toilet paper or draft a reply to the power company. The consumer still has to open the site, sign in, pay and hit send. Agents pick up where the answer ends. Today, they do it slowly, and only after the user hands over passwords, an inbox and a payment method. Those are the gaps to close. If agents can get faster and earn that access, the chatbot becomes the step consumers skip.
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