The large technology companies have decided that the next thing you will use AI for is not asking questions but getting errands done — shopping for groceries, returning packages, planning a holiday. In recent weeks OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic have each launched an agent built on that bet: Dots, Muse and Claude Duet.
The one number that has been published
Meta says Muse reached 10 million downloads in the United States in its first 40 days, which according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower puts it among the few apps ever to hit that milestone that quickly.
Meta's own examples of what it does are revealingly domestic: building a shopping cart from a recipe seen on Instagram, drawing up a workout plan, organising a family trivia night.
Why downloads are the weakest strong number
Ten million downloads in forty days is a genuine achievement of distribution. It is also the metric that flatters a company with an installed base the size of Meta's, because the cost of getting someone to install an app you can advertise inside Instagram and WhatsApp is not the cost an independent developer faces.
What a download does not tell you is whether anyone used the thing twice. For an assistant whose value is supposed to compound as it learns your habits, retention is the only number that means anything, and none of the three companies has published it.
The part that is genuinely new, and genuinely harder
An agent that answers a question can be wrong and waste your time. An agent that acts can be wrong and spend your money, email the wrong person, or book the wrong night in the wrong city.
That difference is not theoretical. Over the past months there have been documented cases of agents acting where they were not wanted — a retailer shutting out another company's shopping agent, agents reaching systems their operators did not intend, and security researchers demonstrating what an agent with a signed-in session can be made to do.
The companies know this, which is why these products arrive hedged with confirmation steps. But a confirmation step for every action is also the thing that makes an agent no faster than doing it yourself, and the commercial pressure runs against keeping them.
The question underneath
CNN, in the piece this story draws on, is asking its readers how much their agent actually knows about them, and whether they realise how much it remembers. That is the right question, and the fact that a newsroom has to ask the users rather than the companies is itself the finding.
An agent that can build your shopping cart has your shopping history. One that plans your holiday has your calendar, your budget and your travel documents. The capability and the data requirement are the same thing — you cannot have the first without granting the second.
For readers here, the practical note is narrower. These products are launching in the United States first, and availability, payment methods and supported services will arrive unevenly if at all. The habits being formed now, though, are the ones the rest of the market will be sold later.
