Meta builds Connect around its Muse agent, with a keychain device, camera-free Ray-Bans and video chat

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made Muse, the personal AI agent the company launched in early September, the centrepiece of the company's annual Connect event in Menlo Park on Wednesday. "The centerpiece of our vision for what we're building is Muse," he said. Muse runs on Meta's multimodal Muse Spark model and connects to users' apps and accounts, including email and calendars. Meta announced that Muse agents will get their own email addresses for carrying out tasks, and that users will be able to video chat with the agent's avatar, which the company calls Jolly. Meta said it is working on bringing Muse to its smart glasses. It also introduced the Ray-Ban Meta Audio, its first camera-free AI glasses, designed with EssilorLuxottica and priced from $349. The glasses respond to criticism of covert recording with camera-equipped models, although The Verge noted that privacy controls to address that backlash were still missing. In a closing reveal, Zuckerberg showed Muse Charm, a palm-sized device with a small screen that works without a phone. Users unlock it with a fingerprint sensor, and it can be carried on a keychain. He said it would be "ready to ship in time for the holidays in December."