Meta's Muse agent has an average order value over 200 USD—what exactly are users buying?
Meta disclosed on Wednesday's Q3 earnings call that more than a quarter of Muse users have completed shopping with this AI agent, with an average order value exceeding 200 USD. The author personally uses Muse daily for email, calendar, and credit cards, but still prefers to place large orders themselves, and guesses that users mainly have it book flights and hotels.
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Something just blew my mind, and I'm asking for your help to figure it out.
According to Meta's Q3 earnings call on Wednesday, more than a quarter of Muse users so far have used the AI agent make purchases — and the average order size is over $200.
I'll say that again: average order size over $200.
This is shocking to me, and I'm someone who has been actively and happily using Muse for a variety of things. I've been perfectly happy to give Muse access to my email, my calendar, my credit cards, and even my Apple health data.
I think it's more I enjoy shopping online myself? I mean, for most things, I suppose. For "fun" stuff like clothes or personal items, I enjoy browsing and the hit of dopamine when you check out. (Others take this to the extreme, using "dopamine sites" that let you browse fake restaurants and "order" food that never arrives.) The other night I ordered — on a real site — cotton balls, razor blade refills, a plain white t-shirt, and a pair of scissors from the Target app while watching TV and even that boring purchase with a total under $30 gave me a small thrill. Why would I want to cede that joy to AI?
I understand, however, that not all purchases are fun. My colleague, Peter Kafka, used Muse to help him place an order for a new washing machine — the kind of purchase that is difficult to decide on, not particularly fun or exciting to make, and fairly expensive. Things like plane tickets, washing machines, or car insurance are in that category of stuff you have to buy, cost a lot of money, are fairly complicated to decide which option to buy, but bring very little joy during checkout.
I can understand why you might want to hand that off to an AI agent.
If you are using Muse to place big $$$ orders, what the heck are you buying?
My best guess here is that people are using Muse for airplane flights and hotels — the kind of big dollar items that are kind of annoying to book yourself, and you care mainly about just booking the right dates.
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Comment below, or you can email me at: knotopoulos@businessinsider.com. Or, you know, tell your Muse to email me.