Meta has acknowledged that its Muse AI assistant was heavily inspired by the open-source project OpenClaw. Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, confirmed that the team sought to build a product similar to OpenClaw that could be scaled to billions of users.
The admission followed public scrutiny from users who identified similarities between the two systems, including identical file names and nearly identical content within the SOUL.md configuration files. Friedman stated that the team believed OpenClaw’s creator, Peter Steinberger, had executed these elements correctly.
Friedman noted that the team began using OpenClaw in January, leading to the purchase of hundreds of Mac minis for the lab. Despite the similarities, he maintained that Muse was built from scratch to prioritize safety, security, and ease of use.
Muse has achieved significant market traction, recently reaching the number one spot on the U.S. App Store. Current data suggests that the application is outpacing the initial launch performance of ChatGPT when adjusted for market availability.
