Meta wires its Muse agent into the books and customer records of small businesses

Meta's own data comes first

An owner can link Instagram professional account analytics, Facebook Pages and Meta ad accounts to Muse "in a few clicks." Meta says the agent "already understands your business: what you sell, what your brand sounds like, and what customers keep asking you about" ^[3].

The other data lives in other companies' software. Meta says Muse can connect to "dozens of tools that businesses already run on, so it can work with your brand, storefront, books, and customer records" ^[4]. The rollout was quick. Meta says it introduced Muse earlier in the month as a personal agent, available in the US and Canada, that completes tasks on a user's behalf ^[1]. It then added skills and connectors for running a business ^[2].

These are two different requests. The first asks a business to let one Meta product read data from other Meta products. The second asks for the ledgers and customer files kept in tools the owner chose from other vendors.

The agent needs the records

Meta's partners state the dependency plainly. Cameron Adams, Canva's co-founder and chief product officer, said of Muse: "It can help you start to organise your ideas and help them take shape, but the real magic happens when it's fully connected to your existing work, your context and your brand" ^[10].

Meta is selling time. The company says small businesses told it they are "short on hours, not ideas" ^[11]. Tom Mulholland, who owns Mulholland Grocery in Malvern, Iowa, said: "I work about 65 hours a week, and there are so many things where I'm the only one who can do them. I need to free up time for the work that actually makes my business money: cutting the steaks, making the sausages." ^[9] Muse, he said, "is taking over a few of them" ^[9].

Owners give the agent access to their records in exchange for the hours it saves. Meta charges nothing for most of Muse. It is free "for most of what people need," with subscription plans for those who want more ^[7]. Meta links the free tier to its "vision to put superintelligence in the hands of as many people as possible" ^[12]. The release mentions the subscription plans without listing prices ^[7].

Meta controls the connector list

Owners can see the available connectors in the Muse app settings, and Meta says more are coming. Software makers that want to be listed can apply at muse.ai/platform ^[5]. A tool vendor that wants to reach Muse users has to go through Meta's application. That puts Meta between a small business and its customers, and also between the business and the vendors it already uses ^[3][5].

Muse also lets an owner plug in custom connectors for services Meta does not support yet ^[6]. That gives a business a way around Meta's list, though the owner has to do the integration.

An owner working about 65 hours a week ^[9] will not study connector permissions, and the connect button will get pressed. I think that is true of how owners behave, and it leaves the leverage where it was. By Adams's account, the agent becomes useful through its connection to the owner's existing work ^[10], and that work sits in the books and customer files the business already runs on ^[4]. Every connector an owner leaves off reduces what the agent can do for that owner. It also denies Meta the context that, in Adams's words, is where "the real magic happens" ^[10].

This quarter's grant, next quarter's scope

Meta has said where the product goes next: "In the months ahead, expect more connectors, more skills, and more of the business handled for you" ^[8]. I'd expect access granted this quarter to be the access next quarter's skills run on. An owner who connects the books and customer records now is deciding in advance what the agent may touch once Meta ships its next set of skills.

That makes the split between Meta's own data and other vendors' software a practical line to draw this quarter. Linking Instagram analytics and ad accounts lets Meta's agent use data from Meta's own products ^[3]. Linking the books and customer records lets it into files held in other companies' tools ^[4].

Washington renames the technology and keeps the definition

Washington is changing the vocabulary around these products. None of it touches the connector decision. An executive order directs agencies, to the maximum extent permitted by law, to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in place of "Artificial Intelligence" and "AI" in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports and policy documents ^[13]. The order says the executive branch "will not acknowledge the usage of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' in any applicable setting" ^[21].

The order defines SI as the technologies covered by the statutory definition of artificial intelligence in 15 U.S.C. 9401(3). That definition governs until later presidential action or an Act of Congress supersedes it ^[15]. Nothing in the order requires changes to previously issued regulations, contracts or grants ^[14].

The longer clock is legislative. Within 60 days of the order, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology must send the President proposed legislative language for a federal definition of SI. The proposal must include an assessment of whether that definition should modify, expand upon or supersede the statutory definition of artificial intelligence ^[16]. Any change to what the law covers would go through that proposal and then through Congress ^[15][16]. Compliance teams have a date to note and, under the order's own terms, no contract to rewrite now ^[14].

The new vocabulary is already in use in enforcement. The Justice Department announced the arrest of Greg Lui, 38, owner of Earthmade Computer Inc., on a three-count indictment charging him with smuggling more than $300 million in export-controlled servers to China ^[17]. Its release described the US-made GPUs inside those servers as "commonly used for Super Intelligence (SI) applications" ^[19]. "SI is the defining technology of the era," said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg ^[20].

According to the indictment, Lui and his co-conspirators shipped the servers in 2023 and 2024 to countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, where no license is required, then re-exported them to China. They also gave US manufacturers false documents about end users and destinations ^[18]. The counts are conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act and the Export Administration Regulations, outbound smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, and they remain charges ^[22].