Meta’s mascot Jolly Muse and other agents charm AI users with kindness

Jolly wants to make your life easier and look cute while doing it. Meta’s Muse AI mascot is a slightly round plush creature with rosy cheeks, large eyes, and a toothless smile. He may wear clothes or small headphones while “working” on tasks for you.

As someone who has already gone through elaborate (embarrassing) hoops to acquire a Labubu, I have to admit that I was immediately taken with the creature’s beginnings. I am not alone: ​​a lot of ink has been spilled on the beauty of the little avatar. Jon Stewart even devoted an entire segment to debating the true intentions of the hug.

Jolly joins a growing group of creatures vying to capture the hearts and minds of potential AI users. There’s OpenAI’s round, mouthless dots, Genspark’s fluffy lobster, and Grok users have adopted a little teal alien named “Groklet.” All adorable, all fluffy, and all debuting just as the general population was beginning to fear that AI might possibly kill us all.

The idea behind Jolly and the rest of the mascots is simple: to make us forget all this pessimism about AI and learn to love it. They play on our most human and primal instincts, distancing us from the fact that they represent something distinctly non-human. This round, fun little creature is your friend! He will work on your behalf! Fuzzy little charms also tap into our sense of nostalgia. Everyone I spoke to for this piece immediately had a connection with Muse’s avatar: some said it reminded them of a Tamagotchi, or MySpace avatars, or Baymax, the adorable robot from Big Hero 6.

“Seeing something cute stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain before you even have a chance to think about it,” Joshua Paul Dale, founder of the niche academic field “Cute Studies” and a professor at Chuo University in Tokyo, tells me. “You are predisposed to act socially toward something you find cute.”

This is not the first time that kindness has arisen in response to a collective sense of unease. In the past, this trait was used as a comforting balm, a PR pivot, or to put a smiley face on something more complex. Cute has proven to be a powerful tool, and AI companies hope they can ride this wave into America’s hearts — and into computers.

The most visible – and successful – use of cute culture occurred in Japan after World War II. Fluffy mascots, manga and stationery were used to shift the country’s narrative from its aggressive, imperial history to that of an accessible cultural destination. This change is perfectly embodied by Hello Kitty, the now omnipresent feline mascot created in 1974 as an emblem of kawaii, the Japanese term meaning cute. Designed to appeal to Japanese women with new purchasing power – as well as their children – the cat avatar has since become a true cultural emissary, bringing comfort to Japanese citizens and promoting the country’s image elsewhere.

Beyond Japan, the deployment of cuteness as a force shaping culture seems to repeat itself over the years. Gen Z has embraced Y2K nostalgia during the pandemic – a marked contrast to their Zoom-first era. Another hit of 2020 was the video game “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” as gamers stuck at home clamored for the comfort of busy lives. Cultural theorist Sianne Ngai calls cuteness “an aestheticization of powerlessness”: for a consumer to feel that something is cute, they must feel that they can exert power over it, giving them a sense of calm control. On the darker side, kindness was used by Purdue Pharmaceuticals in its campaign for OxyContin: the company handed out stuffed toys to practitioners it wanted to convince to prescribe the drug. The Drug Enforcement Administration later said the tactic was “an indicator of Purdue’s aggressive and inappropriate marketing.”

AI companies clearly appreciate the enduring power of kindness. It’s easier for you to ask your boyfriend a question than a gray box – and why not buy a few extra tokens so Jolly can book your next holiday or sift through your finances. For Thiago Serra, a professor of business analytics at the University of Iowa, the brand echoes Tesla. Rather than consumers feeling obligated to take their eco-friendly vitamins and opt for an electric car, Tesla made cars that looked and felt good – the environmental aspect was a nice added bonus. For agents, adding a mascot shifts your thinking from the scary AI that might kill you or handing over your job to a cute buddy who can be helpful in your personal life.

Rebecca Kowalewicz, vice president of digital marketing and Gen X millennial in Philadelphia, has tried a few AI platforms, but none were as fun as Muse. Jolly played on his old sentiment, reminding him of choosing a MySpace avatar. And Kowalewicz went even further: She fed the software a photo of her late dog, Dr. Watson — a rescued coonhound pointer mix — and it quickly generated an animated version of him to replace Jolly. Now Dr. Watson smiles at him, taps and moves his head. She is so attached to the agent that she feels more inclined to stick with it.

“It’s almost like having a best friend at work,” she says, except he won’t grow back and “you don’t have to take him to lunch.”

In addition to personifying inanimate ideas or technologies, comfort and kindness can also soothe us psychologically in times of uncertainty. Take Japan: Already steeped in postwar gentility, the country experienced a new boom in comfort after its housing bubble burst in 1990. People said they felt a sense of healing, Dale told me, temporarily easing their woes amid financial and job market upheaval. Similarly, agents can endear themselves to users by solving a task that dismays them – with a little smile.

This was the case for educational technology consultant Tonja Brunn, a Gen Xer who, like many white-collar Americans, is looking for a job. It was through this research that she and “Monkey”, her agent Muse, first “connected”. Monkey “revolutionized the job search” for Brunn, and she fell in love with the beauty of her new “employee.” Depending on the season, Monkey now wears a little shirt with a pumpkin and two cherub ghosts.

A friendly avatar helping you disconnect from all the worst aspects of job hunting is the latest attempt by AI companies to target a new segment of customers: ordinary people who were put off by the first dour chatbots and scared away by the rush of AI doomsday news.

When Cole Benefield, the 25-year-old founder of Servo, an agent company for service businesses, first saw Labubu’s creature, he thought it was silly. Then he saw Jolly’s promotional materials, happily typing away on a keyboard. The business owners he works with probably wouldn’t be too amused or charmed by this fuzzy guy. But Jolly’s growing appeal revealed something: While other AI companies signal their tech industry bona fides with clever model names and sterile interfaces, Meta’s years of consumer prowess have allowed it to reach a wider range of consumers. Benefield says Meta’s use of Jolly means non-technical users never have to think about what’s going on under the hood.

“Their goal is to get to where they don’t even have to think about it,” he says.

Kaitlyn Murphy, a 26-year-old technology journalist from Massachusetts, wonders how much AI agents could improve her daily life, especially given the access they require. Despite the skepticism, when she first saw Jolly, she was tempted to create her own version.

“I love the idea of ​​being able to watch him type while I send him on missions. I actually think it’s really cute,” she said. The Jolly aesthetic could certainly appeal to cute-obsessed Gen Z, she said, but it would have to go hand in hand with a meaningful attempt to address the broader concerns of AI pessimism that many in her generation still have.

However, the fact that someone like Murphy would be influenced shows the power of these agents’ personification. They also come at a time when consumer confidence is plummeting and growing concerns about the economy are mounting, making the idea of ​​a smiley, pinchable face even more appealing.

“I have psychologist colleagues who speculate that Japan may have reached its peak of kindness, that people are overstimulated by it, and that’s certainly possible,” Dale says. “But my answer to that is that outside of Japan, it’s just beginning.”