Meta admits Muse’s likeness to OpenClaw isn’t a coincidence
techcrunch ·
Meta has acknowledged that its AI assistant, Muse, was heavily inspired by the open-source project OpenClaw, confirming user suspicions about their similarities. Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, stated on X that while Muse was built from scratch, the team adopted many of OpenClaw’s design choices after falling in love with the original tool. This admission follows viral comparisons where users noted that Muse shared nearly identical system files and content with OpenClaw, including a SOUL.md configuration file defining personality traits. Friedman praised OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger as a genius and explained that Meta aimed to replicate his pioneering work in a way that could be scaled securely to billions of users. The company’s approach reflects its historical strategy of identifying successful features in other products and integrating them into its own ecosystem. Despite these admissions, Meta maintains that Muse is a distinct product developed independently rather than a direct copy. Meanwhile, Muse has achieved significant commercial success, recently reaching number one on the U.S. App Store and outpacing ChatGPT’s initial launch metrics.
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