Meta has rolled out its latest artificial intelligence model, Muse Wonder, describing it as the most advanced option for powering digital assistants. But it isn't free.
To use the model, users of the Muse personal agent app must sign up for a subscription costing $20 or $100 per month.
The rollout highlights Meta's push to create fresh AI-derived revenue streams beyond its core online advertising business.
Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang said in an interview on Monday that the company developed Muse Wonder, codenamed Watermelon, to sharpen the capabilities of "personal and professional agents" so they don't get stuck on tasks like booking dinner and checking whether a table is available.
"When you're doing real-world tasks, you hit obstacles, there are situations or frustrations that come up," Wang said. "We specifically trained the model so it can try other approaches rather than stalling, and then check back with the user at any time."
Meta said in a blog post that the latest model "provides our strongest safeguards to date" against "cyber abuse." For now, those protections come only with the paid model.
After Meta launched the AI agent app last month, Muse quickly climbed to the top of Apple's App Store. The app is free, while subscription plans are offered for more usage.
Wang said Meta's AI team has been monitoring agent-related "incidents or issues" tied to Muse in order to understand and resolve them.
Some users have complained on social media that the agent accessed personal messages without authorization, a claim the company denies.
Wang said Meta is trying to better inform people about how to use the app to avoid certain problems.
"I do think there are cases where users granted various permissions for communications and the like early in a conversation and may have forgotten about it later," Wang said. He added that the company is educating users on such matters "to ensure consumers can trust the product going forward."
Coders who pay for access to the company's related Meta Model API will also be able to use Muse Wonder.
Wang said the service will be more expensive than the standard subscription because it is "a much larger model and at the frontier level."
He said its pricing will still be "significantly lower" than the leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
A more powerful variant of Meta's latest model, called Muse Wonder Full, will be available only to developers who sign up for the company's Muse Code AI agent focused on software engineering, with subscription plans of $50 or $200 per month.
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