The race to put out a widely adopted and highly competent digital assistant is a fight to control the next popular tech platform. It just so happens that the companies poised for a heated confrontation over AI agents are also the two dominant digital advertising firms.
Meta (META), which reports quarterly results Tuesday, and Google (GOOG) are headed for an AI showdown.
Last month Meta’s Muse burst onto the scene, delivering the first popular AI agent for normies, and just cracked a download milestone. Muse’s early success, in both downloads and praise, previewed a world where more people rely on their digital helpers to get work done and manage their daily routines.
But even as billions of people are plugged into Meta’s social networks — Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — users don’t depend on Meta in the same way they do Google and Apple (AAPL).
More cautious tech users might wait for the first wave of early adopters to find the bugs and iron out the kinks. The trust that goes with safeguarding emails, calendars, and wallets hasn’t historically been Meta’s purview. Better to hold out for whatever consumer-focused agent the iPhone maker or the Gmail company has in store. Read more.