Meta's Muse blocked by more brokers and retailers

Companies that have publicly blocked Muse are JPMorgan, Charles Schwab, Amazon, Neiman Marcus and Kohl's. The background is a report on 22 Oct that agents had overstepped in customer accounts, after which Senators Warner and Sanders called for legislation to regulate autonomous agents. A CNBC retail expert argues that technology that reduces customer hassle usually wins in the end and that a long-term block will not work (a judgement with no data behind it, so not stronger evidence). In the short term, Muse cannot handle two high-frequency use cases: finance and Amazon. (2) The Wall Street Journal (1 Nov) analyses Amazon's block on Muse as being mainly about ad revenue. Amazon advertising mostly sells paid placements in search results, and an agent that compares prices and picks products itself, ignoring those placements, bypasses that revenue. Amazon says publicly that the reason is security, but the conflict of interest is structural. Walmart and Shopify chose to work with Meta. Our inference is that platforms that earn from on-site ad placements will always have a motive to block, while retailers with less traffic than Amazon that mainly earn from the margin on goods have a motive to use Muse to win traffic, so Muse's shopping landscape will probably split into two camps. This is neutral for the thesis: Muse clearly threatens the biggest e-commerce gateway (otherwise it would not be blocked), but a personal assistant that can do anything cannot yet do so on America's biggest e-commerce platform. (3) The Information (31 Oct) reports that work on the second generation of Max, the humanoid robot Meta is building with Fourier, began in September, and that CTO Bosworth internally calls the humanoid robot the physical embodiment of Muse. A Meta spokesperson says it is internal research with no plan to sell. The design requires it to hear speech from 5 metres away, recognise gestures from 3 metres away, and show states such as listening, thinking and uncertain. The second generation adds a projector and sensors for climbing stairs. This is neutral: management treats Muse as the brain shared by all its hardware, which is consistent, but it is a long way from a product, gives no direct help in the assistant competition over the next 3-5 years, and adds one more long-term investment.