Meta’s latest AI pitch looks a lot like a Tamagotchi

At Meta Connect, the company showed off Muse Charm, a pocket-sized device with an animated avatar on its screen. You can talk to the character to use Meta’s Muse AI assistant.

Meta hasn’t given up on augmented reality, but this is a curious change of scale. Camera-equipped glasses put AI in front of your eyes—and leave everyone else wondering whether they’re being filmed. Some venues are already restricting them. A little companion in your pocket is a less conspicuous way to pursue the same goal: keeping Meta’s AI close all day, rather than waiting for you to open an app.

The glasses could at least pass for a tool. An avatar asks for something else: affection, or at least the reflex to check in. Give the assistant a face, put it in your pocket, and perhaps talking to it starts to feel less like using software and more like tending to a pet. How often would you take it out just because it’s there?

The original Tamagotchi made the deal plain: feed the pixel creature, clean up its pixel poop. Meta’s version can do considerably more, but it needs more from you, too—your questions, your time, a spot in your daily routine. Give it long enough and it might even make cleaning up after it sound like a productivity hack. In the AI race, building a model that answers isn’t the whole job. You also have to make people want to keep talking to it.

In the AI race, building a model that answers isn’t the whole job. You also have to make people want to keep talking to it.