After initially testing the feature in September, Muse, Meta’s consumer AI agent, is now able to make calls to US businesses on behalf of its users. However, only paid subscribers have access to this feature, the company says.
Meta’s Muse, which now has more than 10 million users, the company announced last month, is working to make mainstream AI a mainstream product for everyday users. Making calls is one of the ways it aims to achieve this, as it could handle another task on people’s to-do lists.
According to Alexandr Wang, Meta’s director of AI and head of its Superintelligence Labs division, the feature could be used to take care of calls people don’t want to make, like those to their cable company, the DMV, or to a restaurant that doesn’t offer online reservations.
Previously, only a select number of Muse early adopters could try this feature after requesting access to the AI. Now anyone paying for Muse can make this type of request. Currently, Muse subscription plans start at $20 per month for 500 million Muse tokens per week. More experienced AI users can choose to pay $100 per month for 3 billion tokens.
Muse isn’t the only AI agent capable of calling businesses; startup Instinct offers a similar option, as does Google’s Gemini. However, while AI tools are now certainly capable of handling this task, the reception on the other end of the phone can be mixed. Many businesses and receptionists hang up on calls from AI agents as soon as they realize it’s not a human on the phone. But with AI now better able to imitate a real human voice, it will become harder to tell the difference between a customer and an AI working on the customer’s behalf.
Despite the challenges, this feature could appeal to consumers who have become frustrated with the state of customer service over the years. For too long, customers have been forced to navigate complex phone trees and then sit on hold waiting for a human representative to pick up. If they’re lucky, this person can actually help them and not transfer them to another department. Now, these consumers could potentially use their AI, with its infinite patience, for this tedious task.
While Calls remains a paid-only feature for now, the recently added option to create a Muse email address will soon roll out to free users, Wang said this week.
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