Nat Friedman Confirms Meta Muse Was 'Heavily Inspired' by OpenClaw
Meta said Muse was built from scratch and heavily inspired by OpenClaw after users found near-identical internal files.
- Muse reached number one on the US App Store after launching September 8, though AI app co-founder Ansh Nanda claimed the platform is "LITERALLY OpenClaw for normies."
- Meta's Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta's Superintelligence Labs, acknowledged Muse was "definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw," created by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger.
- Users discovered "nearly identical content" in Muse's SOUL.md file, which defines agent personality; Friedman stated Meta's goal was to build "something like OpenClaw" that could scale to billions.
- While more than 500,000 people tried the app in its first week, Amazon blocked Muse on Sunday for failing to identify itself, and security researcher Patrick Wardle disclosed a Mac vulnerability.
- Meta has a history of adopting features from competitors; it shipped its own version of Snapchat's format for Instagram in 2016, a pattern CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously acknowledged at a 2020 antitrust hearing.
23 Articles
23 Articles
Nat Friedman Confirms Meta Muse Was 'Heavily Inspired' by OpenClaw
Meta’s new consumer AI agent, Muse, has rapidly ascended the mobile rankings since its September 8, 2026, release, securing the #1 spot on the US App Store free chart within ten days. Muse is estimated to have 600,000 daily active users in the US as of September 2026. However, the product’s success is being viewed through the lens of its striking similarity to the open-source project OpenClaw, a connection Meta leadership has now publicly acknow…
Muse sure looks a lot like OpenClaw
We seem to be entering into an AI agent renaissance. Meta's new consumer-facing AI agent, Muse, topped the App Store charts soon after its release and has 600,000 daily active users in the US, by an Apptopia estimate. And AI agent platform Instinct, whose eponymous creator is fundraising at a $2.5 billion valuation, has been […]
Meta's Muse Borrowed OpenClaw's Soul — And Doesn't Deny It
Nat Friedman admitted Meta's Muse AI agent took heavy product inspiration from open-source OpenClaw, including near-identical SOUL.md personality files and workspace structure. The former GitHub CEO praised its creator but said Muse was built from scratch to scale safely to billions. The app already leads the U.S. store.
But is it really a unique product? Meta recognizes that the similarity of Moz with OpenClaw is not a coincidence. The first users of MetaMoz predicted that the reason artificial intelligence performed well is because it depends on OpenClaw, but it is wrapped in a more consumer-friendly package.
Meta says Muse was heavily inspired by OpenClaw
We built Muse from scratch, but it is definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw. Nat Friedman posted that on X on Monday evening. The head of product at Meta Superintelligence Labs was answering a fortnight of speculation about Meta’s new personal agent, and why it felt so familiar to anyone who had used […] This story continues at The Next Web
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