Meta’s Muse AI assistant was born to shop
But after trying a few agentic AI mainstays — asking “Mica” (you can name your Muse assistant) to book a restaurant reservation (yawn), triage your Gmail, or check my morning commute (it referred me to New York City’s official subway website — thanks?) — I decided to go shopping. That’s when things got interesting.
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Available on iOS, Android, Mac, and on the web (I used the iOS app), Muse isn’t the first AI agent to shop on your behalf — Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping can do that, of course — but it is among the first to support Link by Stripe, a one-click digital wallet supported by thousands of online merchants. For those retailers who don’t take Stripe, Link by Stripe can create a single-use virtual card that’s “scoped” for a specific purchase, meaning Muse can use your Stripe wallet pretty much anywhere.
While Muse can use Link for Stripe to purchase items on your behalf, it can’t see the details of the payment methods (including credit card and bank account numbers) you’ve entered into your Stripe account. It’s also not supposed to make any purchases without your final, explicit approval.
Now, assuming you trust Muse with your credit cards (a big ask), what makes it better than just shopping on Amazon — which, by the way, has blocked Muse from accessing its website? I learned the answer when I started using Muse to look for theater tickets.
Muse, as it turns out, is a tireless online shopper, running in its own virtual cloud-based machine and willing to scour multiple websites looking for deals. As a Manhattan dweller who loves theater but can’t afford Broadway tickets every night, I got the idea of using Muse to scoop up bargains for the hottest tickets in town.
I started with the opera — specifically, Verdi’s Macbeth at the Met Opera, which just got a rave review from the New York Times (meaning, time to act fast).
