Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg previewed the keychain-sized gadget at Meta Connect on September 23, saying the company planned to finish its component layout and have units ready to ship in December. Meta has not disclosed a price, battery life or full technical specifications.
The device places Muse inside a small screen-based companion featuring an animated avatar known internally as Jolly. Zuckerberg said users can tap a fingerprint sensor and begin speaking immediately, giving them access to Muse’s real-time voice and avatar functions without unlocking a smartphone or launching an application.
“We packed the whole Muse experience, including the whole real-time voice and avatar stack, into something that fits on a keychain and is always available to talk to,” Zuckerberg said during the presentation. He described the Charm as the quickest way to interact with Muse for people who are not wearing Meta’s glasses.
The form factor has drawn comparisons with Tamagotchi, the small digital-pet toys that became a global phenomenon in the 1990s. Meta’s version, however, is designed as an interface for an AI agent rather than a virtual pet, using a character on its display to give the software a persistent physical presence.
The Charm is expected to include a roughly two-inch display and cellular connectivity, while cameras allow Muse to receive visual information about a user’s surroundings. Meta’s demonstration positioned the device as a portable route to an assistant capable of handling tasks and interpreting what the user shows it.
Its unveiling follows Meta’s September 8 release of Muse, an agent designed to carry out multi-step tasks such as sending emails, arranging travel, shopping and completing online transactions. The app passed 2.8 million downloads in its first 12 days, according to app-market data, giving Meta an early audience for hardware centred on the service.
Muse is available in a free tier as well as paid subscription options priced at $20 and $100 a month. Meta has presented the software as a central part of Zuckerberg’s strategy to develop what he calls “personal superintelligence”, with the assistant intended to work across devices rather than remain confined to a standalone application. At Connect, Meta also announced integrations with retailers including Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora and Wayfair, alongside PayPal and Shop Pay for payments, and more partners over time.
That strategy also raises questions about privacy and trust because an agent capable of acting for users may need access to accounts, credentials and payment information. Meta says sensitive information such as passwords and card details can be kept in secure storage inaccessible to the AI model itself.
Muse’s broader development has already included testing features that go beyond conventional chatbot interactions. Meta has been testing a human-concierge system in which contractors can handle some telephone calls initiated through Muse, alongside automated calling functions. The company has said the testing is intended to help improve safety and privacy before wider deployment.
Meta says Muse runs in a dedicated cloud-based Secure VM and requires approval before sensitive actions such as sending an email or making a purchase. Users choose which services the agent can access and can disconnect them, while Meta says Muse conversations and data stored in the virtual machine are not shared with its advertising systems.
The Charm also puts Meta into an unsettled category of dedicated AI hardware. Earlier standalone products, including Humane’s AI Pin and Rabbit’s R1, struggled to demonstrate that consumers needed another device alongside smartphones. Meta is approaching the category with an existing ecosystem spanning social applications, messaging, AI software and wearable hardware.
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