Artificial Intelligence
oi-Gaurav Sharma
Meta is set to enhance its artificial intelligence ambitions, unveiling Muse Wonder, a new generation of AI models it believes brings it closer to the cutting edge of the rapidly evolving technology sector.
The launch represents a critical step forward for Meta in the competitive race to lead the global AI sector, where it has had to contend with the rise of OpenAI and Anthropic. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new model family on X, saying Muse Wonder was a more advanced offering than the company’s previous Muse Spark models.
Meta launched its Muse Wonder AI models, aiming to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic, reportedly surpassing them on specific tasks and enhancing its AI assistant’s active memory capabilities.
“Muse Spark was our first family of models, and now Muse Wonder is a much larger and more advanced class of models that brings us to the frontier,” said Zuckerberg.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Zuckerberg said the new models would enable more sophisticated capabilities, positioning Meta to compete more directly with leading AI developers.
Meta says Muse Wonder beats comparable offerings including Anthropic’s Opus 5.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, on certain tasks. The company used its own internal benchmark results and data from Artificial Analysis to back its assessment.
Meta scales up investment in AI
The launch comes after a major investment drive to close the gap with its rivals. Zuckerberg said developing the new models needed substantial computing resources, financial investment and sustained scientific research.
Meta’s AI strategy was given a boost in June last year with an investment in Scale AI worth $14 billion bringing its co-founder Alexandr Wang to lead the company’s AI efforts. Now Wang heads up Meta’s Superintelligence Labs and said the Muse Wonder launch was a significant milestone.
He said Meta believed its models were competitive with the best available systems in the industry, across tasks involving personal and professional AI agents.
While competitors have focused heavily on coding-focused agents, Meta has been keen to carve a niche for itself and launch AI systems that could cover a range of consumer applications.
Muse Wonder to strengthen Meta’s AI assistant
Meta has unveiled two versions of the new model family: Muse Wonder and the more powerful Muse Wonder Full.
The standard Muse Wonder will power the paid version of Meta’s Muse AI assistant, launched last month. The assistant will utilise autonomous AI agents for everyday activities including ordering grocers and booking travel.
Meta said the Muse app had become the most downloaded app on both Apple’s App Store and Google Play in the United States, and held on to this position.
One of the key features highlighted was the model’s active memory capability. According to Wang, Muse Wonder could retain relevant information over days, weeks and months, to help it maintain context over an extended period. The model could also attempt alternative approaches if it encountered obstacles in completing tasks.
The models were made available through the Meta Model API and Muse Code. Pricing ranged from $0.20 per million tokens for basic usage to $200 a month for Muse Wonder Full.
However, the launch had run into technical issues relating to how usage was counted against limits for Meta’s Code subscription. Wang said there were several bugs to investigate in a post on X.
Meta moves towards closed AI models
Muse Wonder also represents a shift in Meta’s approach to AI development. As well as previously focusing on open source models, the new offering will be closed, with its most advanced versions marketed directly to businesses.
The move could provide Meta with more control over how its most capable AI systems were distributed and monetised as the competition intensified.
Zuckerberg said the company was already working on more advanced models and expected the pace of progress to accelerate.
At the same time, Meta is restructuring parts of its business and facing increasing scrutiny over its operations. In May, the company laid off 10 per cent of its workforce, impacting around 8,000 employees. It also faced down employee backlash over plans for software to capture mouse movements and keystrokes to help train AI models and withdrew the proposal.
Meta has been hit with legal challenges linked to child safety and social media addiction. The company agreed to pay $18 billion in August to settle a legal battle with US states over alleged failures in these areas.
