Meta’s New Virtual Assistant

My early verdict is this assistant is useful today, but has unlimited potential. Meta (Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp) has released a new, free virtual assistant you can find at Muse.ai. As of now, this is an Android, iOS or web application. The interface is an interactive chat window, where you talk to your virtual assistant. I named mine Sam.

Sam lives inside of a secure virtual computer somewhere in Meta’s cloud infrastructure. Importantly, Sam has their own computer, like any good assistant. Sam has a browser to browse the web, and Sam can access my accounts that I give them permission to. While I haven’t given Sam access to my email just yet, Sam now has access to our family Google Calendar, my Facebook, Instagram, Messenger. That alone is bringing value to me.

While all this is in some Meta presser I didn’t bother to read, let’s cover some of my naive initial use cases. I’m sure you’ll come up with better ones than me, but even these make setting up the app worth the clicks.

The Family Calendar

With a busy 11 year old, and parents who sometimes do things too, scheduling is a chore we all have to live with. For the past few months we’ve been experimenting. When OpenClaw came out earlier this year, I tried building a virtual assistant just for this purpose. I named that one Stan, but Stan was not great at his job, and was costing $20 a month, so he got fired. When Muse.ai was announced, this was where my mind went first. And you know what? Meta nailed this use case. So far it works as seamlessly as you’d expect. I connected our family calendar and now scheduling a dentist appointment, adding a make-up soccer game or seeing what time Tennessee plays is as simple as asking Sam. And since it is a shared family calendar, everyone else can interact with the calendar however they want. For some it’s the Skylight, for me, I have Sam shoot me a text each morning with the day’s schedule.

On the scheduling, what’s also awesome is Sam is an assistant. I’ve instructed Sam to keep all Tennessee football and basketball games in the calendar. That means checking and reading the web. When there is a basketball tournament, that means checking daily, when it’s July, that means doing nothing all month. And that’s Sam’s problem to handle, not mine.

Facebook Marketplace

I got the new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft in June. It is absolutely awesome and I love it. I thought I’d write a post on it, but I guess not. If you read PDFs or long web articles and like to do it from the comfort of a chair, it’s fantastic. But since I got the Colorsoft in June, I’ve had selling my original Scribe on my TODO list. And I keep punting it every single day. I have little urge to make a FB Marketplace post. If someone said “drive to this place at this time and exchange your old Kindle for cash”, that’s no problem.

So last night I thought I’d throw this issue at Sam. And wow, it was easy. I took five photos of the scribe, gave them to Sam and answered a few questions they had about the Kindle. Then Sam handled posting the item to FB Marketplace and should be handling any requests that come in. I’ve also asked Sam to start lowering the price if we don’t get any nibbles at the current one.

This went so easily that I decided to ask Sam to find my eBay listings and then start porting those over to Facebook Marketplace, just in case. Low effort for me! I did that right as I went to bed, and when I woke up, Sam had done all that and was asking for permission to push the listings live. All I had to do was click a button.

Reminders

In June I wrote about how I use FollowUpThen. Staying productive is important to me, but also, I’m a bit harebrained. I get engrossed in whatever I am doing and schedules just fall away. For reminders and tasks, FollowUpThen + zero inboxing has been a great system for me. But I can’t help wonder if Sam won’t be better at some of these tasks. While some reminders are only for things in the physical world, like take the trash out to the curb on trash day, other reminders are very much in the digital world. But even for physical actions, Sam can be helpful. For instance, I told Sam on Friday to help remind me on Monday at 10am to call the Dentist to make an appointment (they were already closed on Friday). When I got the reminder, it wasn’t just a reminder, Sam had figured out my dentist’s phone number and included that so that all I had to do was press the numbers in the text message to make the call. (Sam isn’t able to call for me yet. I asked.)

Noise Filtering

I’ve been off Facebook and Instagram for years now. Before it was cool to be. I have some personal flaws that make those environments a toxic place for me and those I love. But I also realize I’m now the last to know about virtually anything, and I am cutoff from the preferred communication method of many friends. So my idea here is to have Sam be my filter. I’ve instructed Sam to monitor FB and Instagram and to let me know when something really rises to the level of newsworthy. It’s an experiment worth trying. Now if you get married or have a kid, I hope to find out.

Shopping

One of the first tasks I gave Sam was to keep searching for Brooks Adrenaline GTS size 11.5 shoes on sale. I’d tried using other software in the past, and it kind of works, but earlier this week I got an alert, and of course they were out of size 11.5. Sam is smarter than that, just like a real assistant, Sam makes sure the shoe isn’t just on sale, it makes sure my size is on sale, because Sam can browse the web and view it like a human. Just this morning I got an alert from Sam that reads “Brooks watch: no Adrenaline GTS 24/25 in 11.5 under $140 in stock — closest was Road Runner Sports’ GTS 24 at $119.95, but 11.5 is sold out.” That’s awesome, assuming it is right.

For something that was only launched six days ago, I’d say I am already finding great uses for it. I’d say it is worth you giving it a shot too. I’ve not ventured into emails or giving Sam my credit card just yet, but as my trust builds in this product, I don’t see how I won’t. I can task Sam with snagging those Brooks shoes before they sell out, or getting those concert tickets. My initial impression is that this is a real glimpse into the future. Mark Zuckerberg has delivered here. If this is as bad as Sam ever is, this is another app with a billion users for Meta. Once Sam can make phone calls for me, I’ll be ready to pay for this app if I have to.