Meta says its Muse AI assistant was heavily inspired by OpenClaw

In short: Meta says its Muse AI assistant was built from scratch, but it confirms Muse was heavily inspired by the open source project OpenClaw.

What happened

Meta has responded to online speculation that its new AI assistant, Muse, is basically OpenClaw wearing a different brand.

Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, wrote on X that Muse was “definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw.” He also said Muse was “built from scratch,” meaning Meta says it did not directly reuse OpenClaw’s code.

The discussion started after an AI app co-founder posted that Muse looked “literally” like OpenClaw for everyday users. People then shared examples suggesting the two assistants had very similar internal setup files, including matching file names and, in at least one case, nearly identical content.

One example mentioned was a file called SOUL.md. This is a plain text file that describes how an assistant should behave, like a set of house rules and a personality guide (Markdown is a simple way to format text, like adding headings and bullet points). Friedman did not deny the similarities. He said Meta thought OpenClaw’s creator “got those things exactly right.”

OpenClaw is open source, which means its underlying work is publicly available for others to study and build on. Muse has also been gaining attention on its own, including reaching No. 1 on the U.S. App Store, according to the report.

Why it matters

For regular users, this is about trust and transparency. If popular AI apps share the same “blueprints,” people may want clear answers about what is original, what is borrowed, and who is responsible when something goes wrong.

Source: TechCrunch AI